If you haven’t already heard, “Won’t Back Down” is now finally available to buy from the iTunes store (more info on that here), but to mark the occasion the makers have decided to release this outtake from the film, and couple it with some sweet animation. The outtake is Rob Warner recounting perhaps the most famous of all Warner/Peaty stories, from a time when being a ‘pro’ rider meant you didn’t actually have to be that ‘pro’…
“Rob Warner needs no introduction. He has been a corner stone of the sport of mountain biking since its conception, not only in the UK but on the World stage since the early 90’s. When we sat down to short list who we wanted to interview for Won’t Back Down, Warner was number one on our list of people we needed to talk to. He is probably one of the only people who has been around to witness all of Steve’s career first hand, so we knew we would get everything we needed for the film.
So there we were. In Steve Peat’s shed, on a freezing cold February evening, interviewing Rob Warner for Won’t Back Down. We had our script, we had our questions ready and we had all the stories that we wanted Rob to tell us about and, plus we had just come back from Jim McRoy’s place a few days earlier who told us to “ask him about the Marilyn Monroe story”.
I had heard about this story when I was younger and I remember reading about it back in 1996, but I had never heard Steve or Warner talking about it before and I certainly knew that there was no footage in existence to back up what Warner was about to tell us. During the editing process of a film, It’s usually a fairly simple decision, if no archive footage exists, it doesn’t make it into the film, but there was something quite different about this story though, which is why we pushed to make a feature out of it and release it on it’s own. We have hundreds, if not thousands of hours of footage, interviews and photos from people telling stories that could have made it into this movie, but during the editing process unfortunately will never see the light of day. This story was so f–king amazing though that there was no way it was going to be left on a hard drive, never to be seen by the mountain bike world.
We hope you enjoy watching this as much as we enjoyed bringing it to life, so sit back and watch Won’t Back Down: Rob Warner’s Lost Story.”
– John Lawlor and Clay Porter
“Me and Warner have been mates since ’93 and it’s guaranteed to be fun every time I hang with him. This night seems like a few decades ago, which I guess it’s close to! But all the same it was one to remember. Warner does a great job telling it his way! Enjoy.”
– Steve Peat