Despite riding with a broken finger and suffering a horrendous crash in qualifying Rachel Atherton won the first stop of the UCI downhill World Cup series in Maribor, Slovenia in serious style.

Appearing at her first World Cup since her training accident in January 2009, the 22 year old from Llangynog, UK burst back onto the scene with an outstanding performance seeing her nearest rival over nine seconds behind. Atherton missed the whole 2009 season due to injury but this result reaffirmed her authority within the womens field.

It was almost a fairy-tale ending for the Athertons as Rachel's brother Gee nearly made it a double win for the family in the mens event. Narrowly missing the top spot by just two tenths of a second Gee was piped by South African Greg Minnar as his time of 3 minutes 23 seconds and 42 hundreds took the first World Cup of the year.

The course in Maribor withstood three days of rain to provide a perfect start to the year for the Atherton family, eldest brother Dan was also in action and took a credible 9th in the 4X event on Saturday night.

The families focus now turns to home turf as the World Cup heads North to Scotland for round two in 3 weeks time.