Former Superbike and 500cc grand prix rider Anthony Gobert passed away today, following illnesses brought on by his addiction to alcohol and other drugs.
During his racing career Gobert shone brightly, brighter than just about any other rider of the last few decades, Valentino Rossi excepted. Like Rossi he had a rock-star persona and knew how to entertain beyond his racetrack performances. He was a hell of a lot of fun and he liked to get people excited. Fans adored him for that – hence his nickname ‘The Go Show’.
The 48-year-old Australian was perhaps the Shane McGowan of motorcycle racing – immensely gifted at what he did, great to be with, but ultimately doomed to lose his struggles with addiction.
Gobert was a teenage motocross sensation in Australia, winning more than a dozen national junior championships and several senior Supercross titles. When he moved into roadracing he was quickly signed by Honda Australia’s superbike team at the age of 17.
Gobert won six World Superbike races for Kawasaki between 1994 and 1996
The rest of the world got to hear of Goey during the 1994 Australian World Superbike round when he quit Honda on the eve on the event, moved to Kawasaki, took pole position and scored his first WSB victory. Two WSB seasons with the factory Kawasaki team followed, with five more wins, then he signed with Suzuki’s 500cc GP team for 1997.
His Suzuki crew chief was Stuart Shenton, who had previously worked with MotoGP/500cc world champions Freddie Spencer, Wayne Gardner and Kevin Schwantz. Shenton rated Gobert the most talented of them all.
“The guy with the most natural talent was Gobert, but he didn’t realise what he had and he wasn’t able to apply it,” Shenton says.
“He was one of these guys who you get every now and then, ‘Don’t change anything on the bike, I’ll just ride it’. By then we had data.
“We saw the most incredible brake temperatures with him and when he came in we’d see that he was so hard on the brakes that the suspension was bottomed out and he was just hanging onto it. So we said we could put stronger springs in there or more oil – ‘Nah mate, don’t change anything’.
“If he had been able to apply himself and turn up every weekend, fit and healthy, with the right sort of focus, he would’ve absolutely been something.
“I always knew it was going to be an interesting relationship. I hadn’t met him but [team manager] Garry Taylor and [Suzuki race boss] Mistuo Itoh went to Australia to sign him. On his way to signing the contract he wrote off his brand-new $250,000 Porsche by jumping a red light and it hadn’t fazed him in the slightest.”
Shenton met Gobert for the first time following the 1996 season-ending Australian GP at Eastern Creek.
“We were packing up and a scruffy urchin with a few mates in tow was hanging around the back of the garage. Then one of them says to me: ‘G’day Stuart, I’m your new rider, I hope you’re f**king ready for me!’ And that was Anthony Gobert.
“At our first test with him at Eastern Creek we were doing his first debrief, with all the Japanese engineers sitting there, pens hovering, waiting to take notes and get his first impression of the bike. And he says, ‘Well, I need two things: I need a cage in the back of the garage with a dancing girl in it and we’ve got to get some beers in the fridge’.
Gobert at the ’97 Italian GP
“Then he gets up and walks out. There were six Japanese engineers sitting around the table and they didn’t know what to do, what to say or what had just happened. With his talent, he should’ve been world champion, but it was never going to happen.”
Gobert’s career was punctuated by tales of high jinks, which mostly seemed like good fun at the time, but his love of the high life was already taking control.
“Gobert turned up with a bag full of someone else’s urine, Withnail and I style”
Five-time GP winner Garry McCoy was friends with Goey when they raced 250cc production bikes in Australia and even then he was a wild child.
“It was always a bit difficult to hang onto Goey’s rope,” remembers McCoy.
When Gobert joined Suzuki, the team obviously wanted to get him clean. During 1997 pre-season testing the Lucky Strike-backed outfit had him tested him for marijuana. Gobert turned up for the test hiding a Ziploc bag full of someone else’s urine, Withnail and I style. When his urine was tested, he failed the test.
“I wanted to fire him then, but the factory told me it was my job to sort him out,” says Taylor. “I kept saying there are better people than I to sort out people with drugs problems, so we put him on lockdown and took his passport.”
Taylor knew the Jaguar Formula 1 team, which had self-proclaimed psychic Uri Geller mentoring its drivers, so Taylor arranged a session for Gobert, accompanied by former GP rider Stu Avant, whom Taylor had hired as Gobert’s minder.
“We went to Uri’s house and he told Anthony what you can do with your mind,” remembers Avant. “Uri made a spoon bend in Anthony’s hand from four metres away! It was spooky what he could do. Then they went into a room where Uri talked with him about getting his life together. As we were leaving, I said to Anthony, ‘F***ing hell’, and Anthony said, ‘What a tosser!’”
Gobert showed some promise aboard Suzuki’s RGV500, scoring five top-ten results in his rookie season. However, he failed more drug tests requested by Suzuki.
Anthony Gobert 1997 Italian GP
Gobert showed some promise during his rookie 500cc GP season with Suzuki but was already getting into trouble
“We had a tobacco company as a sponsor and they were very antsy about being associated with anyone doing drugs,” adds Taylor, aware of the irony.
“Anthony wouldn’t have been very helpful when we tried to renew our contract with Lucky Strike, so we parted ways.
“We really wanted to make it work with him – his crew could see the guy was something special and when you spoke with him he was a genuinely nice kid. It was just a huge waste of talent.”
Gobert was signed by Vance & Hines Ducati to contest the US Superbike championship. He had some good rides, including another WSB victory, at Laguna Seca.
“When Anthony came to the US he needed a place to stay,” recalls his Vance & Hines team-mate Ben Bostrom. “So I said, ‘Dude, come stay with us and hang out’. We’d go to the gym, then he’d go hit the bar, and I’d be going, ‘Dude, I can’t hit the bar every night’. It was just too much, so he moved out. For sure, this is a wild man!”
Gobert failed more drugs tests, which lost him the Vance & Hines ride. He had brief stints with Team Roberts and MuZ in 500 GPs, Virgin Yamaha in BSB and Bimota in WSB, which gave him his last WSB win, at a wet Phillip Island.
More American rides followed, with Yamaha USA, Austin Ducati and Erion Honda, then back to Australia, back to Europe to contest the Spanish championships and finally back home with a privateer superbike team.
And that was the end of Gobert’s racing career. Without racing’s adrenaline fix his life spiraled downwards. In 2008 he was arrested on two counts of robbery in Surfers Paradise. In 2019 he was beaten half to death by a gang wielding baseball bats.
Motor Sport offers its condolences to Anthony’s family, friends and loved ones.
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