Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

There was more. Photographed after a preseason test with a beer in each hand, Gobert's reputation as a party ani-. mal threatened to overshadow his racing duties. Solo Moto, a Spanish magazine, said that his excesses were the root of the problem with the team, going so far as to say tha t he had been fired. The journalist who wrote that was summoned by a Lucky Strike press officer at Mugello for an explanation. But damage like that is hard to undo. Clearly, it's taken its toll. There's a bit less bravado in his voice and the outrageousness has been muted. Predictions of immediate success are less frequent. He has changed his hair color to bleached straw blonde, which, though not natural, at least could have been the product of nature's palette. "It's just something 1 felt 1 had to doget back on my feet again, get started again," Gobert said, "try to build some results, build my confidence in the machine. Once I get happy with everything, I'll go a bit radical again. At this point, I've got to put my head down and learn as much as I can, so I just fit in at the moment." Will he ever fit in? "Probably not. I try from time to time, but I don't think I have it in me." In a class which inspires increasing apathy, Gobert has the potential to be a hero, but the results have to come. After finishing 13th in a race marked by attrition, he has nowhere to go but up. It won't be easy. "Really, all that I want to do is get my collarbone 100 percent," he says of the process which should take about a month, "stay injury-free and get some good results." The collarbone is more a mental than a physical hindrance, holding him back when he g~ up to the edge he knows he has to ride on. "In the past, on superbikes, I tried to win straight away and, I mean, I've done that also. Right now I've got to realize that I've got quite a few years to stay here. There's no real use for me trying to go out and achieve it all in the first year, in the first couple of races, and ending up damaging myself and not being able to race anymore. So I've got to look at the big picture and not just race by race." On the plus .side, it's immediately obvious that he's taken GP racing more seriously than he did superbikes. The distended torso which he squeezed, very sausage-like, into his leathers last year has been trimmed and toned, giving evidence that he knows, physically at least, what he needs to do to compete. He emanates optimism and self-confidence and believes, despite all his trouble, that he can win the 500cc World Championship. But not this year. Humility has caused him to lower his expectations. "I still believe 100 percent in my ability, that I can be SODec World Champion; it's just a matter of how long it's going to take," Gobert said after he'd qualified 20th for the Italian GP at Mugello. His debut in Lucky colors was inauspicious: a broken collarbone while testing in Japan last fall. It was then that he discovered that the Suzuki GP machine was more of a handful than the Muzzy Kawasaki. "It's a whole new beast, really," he saY's, though he adds that, since he's had a broken collarbone throughout his apprenticeship, it's prevented him from getting a true read on the bike. "It's so much lighter that you have to be a bit careful with the way you go rolling the throttle on. It can catch you out very easily and throw you over the high side very easily." That was a 'Iesson learned the hard way. Two-tenths of a second slower than Beattie in a test session, Gobert went out on old tires, thinking he'd come in after a few laps for new ones. Th.en the red fog set in. "I went out there and Daryl went past me on the second lap and I couldn't help myself, I wanted to hook in behind him and see how good he was going, and try to beat his time by following him," Gobert explained. "I started spinning it like I had more grip, like I had new tires. I didn't have that grip and it spit me over the high side." As a result, Gobert had to get a big-' ger plate put in his collarbone, "because the last one was too small and this one has seven or eight screws holding it together." Gobert isn't blaming the tires for that crash. Oearly, it was his error. But he is struggling to make the transition to Michelin from Dunlop. "The rear tire seems to grip better initially, but breaks away quite easily, whereas the Dunlop you can slide and really feel it the whole time," he said. "The Michelin definitely doesn't give you much feel. The Dunlop really gives you feel so that you can push .the front end and slide it. I think they're both equally good tires, they just have different characteristics. To be honest, 1 prefer the characteristics of the Dunlops. It's going to be a case of adapting my style to the Michelin as well. With the Michelin, you don't seem to get as loose on the . brakes, you don't seem to get as loose off the throttle as well, so it's going to be initially a little different style for me. But once I get 100 percent fit, you're going to see the same old me." It will require some improvement on the machine for that to happen. In Gobert's absence, Australian veteran Peter Goddard took over both the racing and development chores. Though Gobert pronounced himself ready for Japan, he was asked to sit, the team saying they wouldn't have him back until the machine was ready. It caused some friction and generated rumors that he was being taught a lesson, but Gobert says he now believes them. "I wasn't sure what they (Lucky Strike Suzuki) were up to. They kept saying they were just resting me and waiting for the machine to get a little bit better. And, basically, that's right. They weren't lying to me. Here I am and the machine's a little bit better." "We were waiting for him to be fit," team manager Garry Taylor says, disputing the notion it was a disciplinary move. "He seems to be. It's his first race, so we're not exactly into major heroics and injuring himself or crashing." As for the development, Gobert is less than enthused. "It's so difficult to say whether it handles any better or not," he said. "To be honest, I don't like the way it's handling at the moment. It's just very hard to plant the front end. It seems very hard to get the front sort oLin the long comers I'm having a problem keeping it on line. Every time I tum on the throttle, it wants to run wide. Really, I don't know if Peter Goddard's trying to set it up like a superbike or not, but it feels like a semi-trailer compared to when I rode it last." That's a statement which refutes, to a large extent, the official reason for his absence. And, as he said last year, he isn't much help with setup. "To be honest, I'm making less adjustments than with the superbike. I know so little about setup, I've just got to say to them, Well, it's doing this, it's doing that, and using their advice, their experience, to know what's going on." What's happening off the track is more difficult to discern. Among the many rumors was one that Gobert had been required to undergo urine testing. Asked about this, team manager Taylor neither confirmed nor denied it, saying, after some thought, "It's in all of our riders' contracts and it's in all of our crew contracts. I don't think we're alone in that, and I think it's pretty typical of major industries in sports." The item in Solo Moto alleged abuses which Taylor says he has no tolerance for. "Our biggest concerns are his fitness and general recovery from injury. I would say, really, those are the two. He (Anthony) knows our very strict views on abuse of either drugs or alcohol. Everybody understands where everybody is on it. I think he projects an image of a fun party animal and projecting that image is no problem, as long as he realizes that there is a very, very serious side to this business. And in his projecting that image, people can perhaps take away the wrong feeling from it. Projecting it is one thing, but if you end up with people thinking you might be using alcohol or other substances when you're doing your job, then you're risking other people and you're risking yourself. I don't have any worries in that direction. I'm sure that we understand each other very clearly." Gobert says he's been hearing rumors ever since he began racing as a lo-year-old. "Now, nothing's changed. It's still the media saying things, and I think it's just people that don't have anything better to do than start these rumors and sell a story to a certain magazine. That's all it gets down - is trying to seII a story to a magazine - and however bad they can make me seem, the more money they get for the story." The photo of him with a beer' in each hand was "taken when I had one beer for myself and I was on my way to take Daryl (Beattie) his beer. It's the kind of thing where I didn't care about the photo being taken because it was in good fun. After everyone works hard or is happy with the job that they've done, they want to celebrate. I train very hard away from racing, my life is 100 percent dedicated to this sport, so if I can't have a beer after my job's done, I'd rather do another sport," he says, knowing what it's going to take to succeed in this one. "Really, it's a matter of keeping my head down and trying to come up with the end result in the near future, or winning. If 1 do th)lt, I'll be satisfied. If I can't do that, I'll go jet-skiing or something. The girls are very sexy over there in America on the Jet Skiing scene," he says with a mischievous grin. "It's a good option. Every time I see it on TV, I want to live in America." c;x 23

• Cover