Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
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Anthonv Gobert STORY AND PHOTOS BY HENNY RAY ABRAMS y ou want to believe him. You want to believe that he's turned his life around; that he's given up his bad habits; that he no longer has a drinking problem; that he no longer chases skirts; that he no longer wallows in his own girth; that he appreciates what he has; that he doesn't think of racing in America as a jail sentence, as he once did. You want to believe Anthony Gobert because, no matter how many times he's blundered, no matter how many drug tests he's failed, no matter how many teams he's been through, you like him. You like him because there's something ineffable charisma, star power, the connection. "Great guy: is the first comment most who know him offer, often before a qualifying addendum. Even Terry Vance, whose heart he broke more than once, including at the 1999 World Superbike event at Laguna Seca where Gobert was told he wouldn't be riding after failing an earlier drug test, is in his corner. "I still wish him the best: Vance recently said. "I want to see him succeed. I really do. Because I want him to set an example for all those guys out there that have those same kind of problems, that they can overcome." Has the tattooed and pierced "Wild Child: finally grown up? And, if so, what took so long? To find out where he's headed, you have to know where he's been. It begins when Gobert met Rob Muzzy at PhiUip Island at the end of the 1994 season. Muzzy had watched Gobert finish eighth and sixth in his World Superbike debut at Sugo on the Honda he'd take to the Australian Superbike Championship. Honda didn't have anything for Gobert at PhiUip Island and his contract was expiring. So he carried his leathers down the pit lane to join the Muzzy team, sat in the Muzzy pits, and peeled the Honda stickers off on the eve of qualifying. Then he went out and became, at 19, the youngest winner ever in a World Superbike race when he took the second race. Almost as impressive was that he was leading Scott Russell in the first race when Gobert slowed to allow Russell maximum points in his title fight with Carl Fogarty. Gobert's first full season away from home was 1995. Russell was his teammate, but he was restless and defected to the Lucky Strike Suzuki team after the third round of the series at Donington Park, ostensibly to replace the just retired Kevin Schwantz. That left Gobert on his own in a brave new world of hotels and foreign tongues. The problems didn't start until 1996. Kawasaki had a new motorcycle and needed someone with more experience to develop it. Frustration set in, and he was too often at odds with Muzzy. He'd bought his first motorhome and was clearly enjoying it. When I went to interview him at Hockenheim that year, the first thing I saw when I opened the door was a halfempty half-gallon of Jack Daniels at the top of the motorhome stairs. This was "Animal House" on wheels. It would have been condemned by the Kabul Board of Health. The chaos in the motorhome mirrored the chaos the team was in. It was in the Hockenheim garages 20 MARCH 6, 2002' cue I • ne""s that he pointed to a cleaning lady and said he'd rather have her working on his bikes. Better she should have worked on his motorhome. Still, he won a leg at Laguna Seca and ended the season with a brilliant double at Phillip Island, those being his two favorite tracks. Fourth in the 1996 World Superbike wars, Gobert moved on to Lucky Strike Suzuki another bad fit. Knowing what he did of Gobert, Suzuki's Garry Taylor asked former racer "Kiwi" Stu Avant to look after him. The intention may have been good, the execution was lethal. "The only pressure I had was Suzuki sort of wanted somebody to live with me and follow me around," Gobert said in an interview a few years later. "I had to do what he said every single day. That was where the pressure came from. I'm an individual, I like to do my own deal. It's kind of hard when someone tries to press you down. When I'm in that situation, I tend to rebel, and that's what happened a lot." In the end, Taylor was vindicated when Gobert tested positive for marijuana the Friday before the Catalunyan round in Barcelona, round 13 of 15. Gobert was immediately sacked. At the time, he didn't sound contrite. Time has changed his view. Gobert now says that his biggest regret is how he left the Grand Prix scene after working so hard to get there. The next stop for Gobert was with the Vance & Hines Ducati team. Terry Vance had run Yamaha's road-race program into the early '90s, had taken a break, then had rejoined the fray with Ducati. But he'd never had a rider like Gobert, for better or worse. "We went to the starting line thinking we could win every race, and I mean we were never in that position prior to that, ever: Vance says. "We'd had some decent riders. When Colin [Edwards] was with us, that worked out good, that went down good, but he was never a presence like Anthony was." Vance continues: "I know for a fact that he helped us more than we helped him. For all the pain and problems he gave us, he gave us a rider who could put it in the winner's circle, which said that we were doing a good job." The flip side was the pain that came with being disqualified on the first day of qualifying for the Laguna Seca World Superbike round in July 1998. "If he hadn't done the drug thing, he could've won the championship that year: Vance says, and he believes, "He would have been World Champion the next year on a Ducati." Gobert's turnaround didn't begin with that drug test, but Vance did see it as a wake-up call. "When you look at it like that, maybe that's what needed to happen for him to grow up: he says. Gobert drove another stake in the V&H relationship when he failed to show for the final race of 1999 at Pike's Peak. Teammate Ben Bostrom was in the thick of a championship chase with Mat Mladin - he'd end up losing by 10 points - and could have used Gobert's help. Gobert didn't show that weekend, blaming a motocross training accident. That said, in the end, Vance said that it was all worth it. "I don't like what he did and all the things that went down, but I know for a fact that it legitimized who Vance & Hines was as far as a race team. We'd won races before, but we weren't dominant. I mean with him we were. We won six races in that one year [1999] that him and Ben [Bostrom] were with us. That's about as dominant as you can get." Gobert showed how little he appreciated Vance's opportunity at a press conference at the Australian Grand Prix at the end of the 1999 season.