Return to Glory: Rob Warner | Ride Unleashed 1

It had been a long time since Rob Warner had taken his last downhill run in Schladming, Austria. Eighteen years, to be precise.

Warner, long retired from competition, had gotten his hands on the new Giant Glory Advanced DH bike and decided it was time to revisit two places in Austria that loom large in his storied career: Kaprun, where he scored his first World Cup win in 1996; and Schladming, where his career came to an end a decade later.

These two mountain resorts stand as bookends to a colorful racing career that began in the late 1980s in England and ran parallel to mountain biking’s golden era, a stretch that saw the sport rise in popularity, drawing massive crowds and ultimately making its debut at the 1996 Olympic Games.

The defining moment of Warner’s professional career came in 1996, in Kaprun, when he became the first British rider to win a Downhill World Cup. Aboard a Giant ATX 990, Warner’s time of 7:15:32 held up, and he took the victory by 3.53 seconds ahead of French world champion Nicolas Vouilloz.

It may or may not have rained between Warner’s run and those of his competitors, just as the mayor of Kaprun may or may not have named a commemorative street after Warner in honor of his victory. Let’s not let details get in the way of a good story.
 
In this version of events, Warner returned to Kaprun in search of Warnerstrasse, and to revisit the finish line where he celebrated his greatest athletic achievement. And in this version of events, he then went over to Schladming, where in 2006 he had a massive crash that effectively ended his pro career, so that he could to some demons by putting that new Glory to the test. 
 
The trip was, in a sense, Warner’s own return to glory. 
 
“It was nice to go back to Schladming and point a modern downhill bike down a World Cup track I raced in the past,” Warner said.

When he started racing World Cups in 1993, Warner competed on a hardtail with a suspension fork that had 1 inch of travel and often needed to be locked out to prevent the front tire from brushing against the fork bridge. High-end bikes of the era were made of aluminum and equipped with V-brakes, 26-inch wheels, and tires with inner tubes.
 
“In that era, to get to the bottom with the chain staying on was quite an accomplishment,” Warner said. “The brakes really did not work very well. In many respects, even though it was nowhere near as quick as it is now, it might’ve been more dangerous because of the equipment failures. Nothing really worked. And then a few companies came in, and it was an absolute race, like an arms race, in the development of the bicycles.”
 
After riding his new Giant Glory Advanced at Schladming, Warner said the differences between today’s modern downhill bikes and what he raced in the late 1990s and early 2000s are almost too staggering to describe. 
 
“They are light years apart,” Warner said. “It’s an astronomical difference. When you look at how far they’ve come, you just can’t believe it. It really is every single part of that bike—all of it. Every bit of the Glory is way better. The frame geometry, the frame material, the suspension, the disc brakes, tubeless tires, carbon wheels, 29-inch wheels…"
 
“When you look at how quickly the sport develops—the speed of it, the bikes, the riders—you shouldn’t be surprised that in almost 30 years there would be that much difference. That 1996 [Giant ATX 990] is from the very infancy of downhill bikes, it was one of the first downhill bikes there ever was. The Glory I am riding now is like the Formula 1 car of cycling, it’s an all-out race machine.”

Just as the equipment has evolved over the decades, so have the athletes. Today’s professional downhill racers utilize physiological science, weight training and sport psychology as much as they look for every technological advantage. That wasn’t the case during Warner’s racing days.
 
Along with compatriot Steve Peat and American Shaun Palmer, an action sports legend who crossed over from snowboarding, Warner was a key figure among a generation of downhill racers known for partying as hard as they competed — thrill seekers whose need to live on the razor’s edge was applied equally day and night. In the podium photo from that 1996 Kaprun World Cup victory, a longhaired and bearded Warner beams like a proud caveman, surrounded on both sides by clean-cut, sponsor-friendly Frenchmen—including Vouilloz, whose career would ultimately include 16 World Cup wins and seven elite world titles.
 
Warner returned to the Kaprun World Cup in 1997 ranked second in the World Cup standings, having stood on the podium at all five World Cup events that season. One might assume the defending champion, with a shot at winning the overall, would have been all focus and determination the night before the series finale. Nope. Warner stayed out late, finished 47th, and dropped from second to sixth in the series rankings. And he regrets nothing. It was all part of the experience.
 
“It was entirely different to what it is now,” Warner said. “The French definitely took it seriously, they always have. And then there was us, Peaty, Palmer, me, Kurt Voreis, Randy Lawrence. We’d go out and usually end up in a bar. The rest of the team would turn in on the night before a race, but I would continue, even the night before a race, but that was usually because I was nervous and I didn’t like the pressure, so I would try to have the excuse of a hangover. That was the mentality at the time.”

Of course, Warner is probably best known for the second act of his career in mountain biking as a race commentator. It started with live-stream pioneer Freecaster.com, where his commentary on Giant DH rider Danny Hart’s world championship winning run in 2011 became the stuff of legends, and then continued with Red Bull TV, where he and former XC pro Bart Brentjens partnered on World Cup race commentary for over a decade. 
 
In that time Warner has indisputably become the voice of mountain bike race commentary. Red Bull’s contract with the UCI was ultimately outbid by Discovery Sports, bringing Red Bull’s World Cup coverage to an end following the 2022 season. Warner remains with Red Bull, however, commentating on other Red Bull events such as Crankworx, Cerro Abajo, and Hardline.
 
“It’s been pretty good, mate,” Warner says. “I’ve been able to have one more bite of the apple.”