After storming through the qualifying rounds at Fort William, Rachel Atherton kept her cool to win round one of the Downhill series at the UCI Mountain Bike World Cup.

As the sun shone over Scotland on Sunday, Gee Atherton, Rachel’s brother, made it a family affair by crushing the competition to win in the elite men’s race.

Even though Rachel was first among the women in qualifying rounds, over six seconds in front of Emmeline Ragot, history had proven that a win wasn’t inevitable.

Speaking with Redbull.tv after winning the qualifying rounds, Rachel admitted,

Fort William is ridiculously hard. I’ve qualified first a few times here and you can’t let your guard down.

Defending World Cup champion Rachel has been burned before in Scotland, finishing second for the last three years, so it was great news for her to be able to add this Fort William win to her resumé.

This is one I’ve never been able to win. All the way down the track, people are saying your name and it’s hard to concentrate. Finally, I crossed the line here and heard cheering and not groaning.

Manon Carpenter finished 2nd, after Rachel, making it a British one-two in the women’s field. After suffering from food poisoning on the first day of practice, Manon certainly dug deep to claim her second place. While France’s Emmeline Ragot, worked hard to finish in 3rd place.