RACHEl Atherton added to her record number of podiums when she took bronze in the UCI Mountain Bike World Cup Downhill at Leogang, Austria, on Saturday.

Fastest mum in the world Atherton’s remarkable return to racing continued as the Continental Atherton rider secured third place hot on the heels of last week’s stunning win at Lenzerheide, in just her second race in four years.

The 35-year-old now has a record 76 World Cup podiums but it could have been a 41st World Cup win had she not lost a bit of time on the jumps before the woods.

She still set a blistering time of 3:30.556 which was only beaten by UCI Mountain Bike Downhill world champion Valentina Holl (Rockshox Trek Race Team) who took the title in front her home fans in Austria with 3:23.222 and Camille Balanche (Dorval Am Commencal) with 3:27.525.

.“Wow!” exclaimed Cedric Gracia watching on Eurosport commentary as Atherton’s time splits came in.

“It cost her a lot of time coming into the corner,” he added as he watched the replay of her slightly missed jump, explaining how easy it is to lose time in what seems like quite a small moment.

Atherton has effectively been away from racing ever since she snapped her Achilles during practice at Les Gets back in 2019.

Recovery from injury was followed by the pandemic and effective cancellation of the 2020 season and the birth of daughter Arna in August 2021.

Continental Atherton team-mate Andi Kolb produced a stunning ride to take his first World Cup win in front of his home crowd.

Andi gave the Austrian crowd (many of whom wore his trademark moustache!) a lot of credit for his win saying “it took ages to get here (to the top step).

“I’ll never forget this day! I made a few mistakes but I kept on pushing… this crowd is the reason that I could go fast.”

Both riders were aboard the Atherton bike designed by Rachel and her brothers, Dan and Gee, and hand-made in Machynlleth.