Raising Champions The A'hern

Let’s meet the a’herns; there’s mum and dad, otherwise knowns as jen and nick (a dual commonwealth games gold medalist and triple olympian in his own right!) and then there’s the kids, brother kye (19) who’s a junior world champ and multi-national champ, and then of course there’s sister sian (22) who has become one of the most recognisable faces in Australia woman’s cycling, a multiple-national champ and oceania champ.

You could say that they’re just your regular aussie family from canberra (who have spent the best part of the last decade sharing a journey that is anything other than regular!) the a’hern’s have always shared a super close family bond, as well as a passion for mountain biking and when they set out to chase their dreams they absolutely turned it into a reality. This is the story of how jen and nick sacrificed everything to provide their kids with the opportunity to follow their dreams, and at the same time how kye and sian have turned their racing successes into their careers.

Let’s start off by asking how you guys first got into mountain biking? Jen: Sian and Kye started off racing motocross actually and they both got up to the National level with that, but it was just so expensive and demanding and we needed to look at doing something else. Nick and I had always been into mountain biking and so we decided to buy the kids bikes to see if they liked it. I remember really early on we entered them in their first MTB race, it was an XC event, but neither of them enjoyed it too much because it was just so exhausting. So that was their MTB racing careers done for a few years until one day Kye came home and told me that there’s this discipline where you only ride down the hill and I remember saying to him “surely not?” Well, it turns out there was!

It seems like a natural transition with their skillset from motocross over to DH, being used to the high speeds and spending a lot of time off the ground? Jen: Absolutely. Even that same adrenaline kind of feeling. Our kids being who they are, they don’t do anything by halves, when we finally found a DH race for Kye to have a go he ended up winning it! I remember he actually rode Nick’s cross country bike in that event and he somehow still managed to win.