Up Close and Personal With Rachel Atherton & Her New YouTube Channel

Rachel Atherton has cemented her name as one of the winning-est gravity athletes of all time. But a massive injury in 2019 meant she had a lot more time on her hands than she was used to. Not one to sit still, Atherton has created her own YouTube channel to share her journey back (and editing it all herself to boot!). Catch the full release and first video after the break.

The last few years have been a crazy whirlwind of head down graft, winning races and injuries, its so intense and I put myself under a lot of pressure to get those results. We used to film the Atherton Project back in the day, which was so fun, but it got too intense to film that way alongside racing. Because I’ve been injured for the last nine months I’ve had a lot of time to think, and then the coronavirus lockdown situation got me thinking even more!!

Suddenly I had the headspace away from racing, now I’m starting to ride again, to relearn how to ride and get to grips with jumps and speed, it feels as if I’ve been reborn after my injury, everything feels so good!

I found myself wanting to start my own channel to film what I get up to in a super chilled way, giving an insight into my life with all the ups and downs. I want to share the life of Dyfi Bike Park and how Dan builds there, Atherton Bikes as it unfolds, racing when it starts again, and just to inspire people to ride bikes, to work through the setbacks. For me personally I wanted to have a new challenge in my life and to learn new skills (hopefully!) so I am editing it all myself, which is terrifying and scary but as a downhill racer all I’ve ever done is focussed on training and racing, so this is totally out of my comfort zone! I didn’t even have a YouTube account!

I feel ever more inspired by the messages, emails and photos that we get from people around the world that we’ve connected to through racing. People send us pics or stories of their life, or pics of them or their kids riding bikes, so I wanted to give something to those kids and people that was entertaining and engaging, and hopefully inspiring, to create something more real than one photo on Instagram … so here we are! The least technically minded bike racer ever has started a YouTube channel!