dan atherton CREATOR OF
The leading line-layer of the all-conquering Atherton family moved from the South West to Wales with his siblings many years ago. After a near-lifelong obsession with building trails and jumps, Dan – or Athy, as he’s known – created the extreme downhill track known as Hardline. In its blood-stained skidmarks of success, he went on to create the 650-acre Dyfi Bike Park.
Having hand-carved trails here for years, Athy knows what to focus on when digging Welsh soil. “Building in Wales is different to anywhere else,” he tells us. “Ideally, you’d want a drain on both sides of the track, but that’s not always possible. The aim is that the tracks should run as well in the wet as in the dry, and that’s hard, especially when it comes to jumps. So, we build for the wet, and people brake a bit in the dry.”
Since opening up his trails for all to ride, Athy has found that keeping on top of the Welsh water margin is an eternal battle. “Dyfi Bike Park is actually built on a fairly mellow gradient, so drainage is even more important,” he explains. “In lots of places, the only way to keep the track well-drained was to dig down to the bedrock, and that could mean shovelling through a metre of bog.
“Bike parks are actually really hard to maintain, compared with something like the Red Bull Hardline track. It’s the combination of the sheer amount of traffic and the volume of water that comes down that’s the biggest killer. The trails have a mind of their own and they’re constantly evolving – a section that’s been fine for a year will suddenly flood. Luckily, we have a solid dig crew and so we’re constantly monitoring. We just need to be on it the whole time.”
With a reputation for building extreme trails, how has he learned to tone it down to suit us mere mortals? “I’ve definitely shifted from building every track as a challenge to understanding that people sometimes just want to have fun. Our [bike park] riders have [sister] Rach to thank for that – right from the start, she’s been coming up when I’m in the digger, saying, ‘Stop! Make it smaller!’.” Rider input has also been crucial in the evolution of the trails.
“Chatting on the uplifts, week in, week out, listening to what people want to ride, that’s a really important part of the experience, for me. People who ride here are so good at giving feedback. At first, they’ll feel bad, because they’ve seen how much work we’ve put in. But they know we want them to be honest, so they’ll say what it is they most want to ride. The biggest thing I’ve learned is that people need to take it a bit slower sometimes. We’ve got three red tracks open now, and it’s brought a whole new set of riders to the park – it’s great to see how much their confidence builds, even in a day. We started out with just black trails. They were hardcore, and people were a bit intimidated to ride here, but we’re a lot mellower now. I haven’t seen anyone who hasn’t given [red trail] ‘Lovey Dyfi’ a good go!”
Without a doubt, Dan’s greatest hit is the Hardline track – used for the annual race attracting some of the world’s best downhillers and freeriders – but how did it come to fruition? “We’d got bored with World Cup tracks that didn’t hold any technical challenges. They were just about going fast, and we wanted to reclaim that feeling of working out how best to tackle a feature, of challenging yourself. The early years were definitely a transition for me – the stuff I’d built before was always for us to ride, so it took a while to adjust. Riding your own tracks and riding something someone else has built are very different experiences.”
He elaborates, “I was so comfortable with that mountain, that dirt, because I’d been riding there for 15 years. But riders would turn up from America and it was so alien to them. I was surprised by how uncomfortable they were, but if I’d gone to their local, I’m sure I’d have felt the same. It was surprising to see the level of self-preservation that people operate on, and how sensible they are. I saw it at Hardline and it’s a good thing – even more so at the bike park.”