Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

"I like to think that I just got out of jail," he said. "It's kind of like I feel like I just served a sentence. In jail that's all you get to do is think. That's all I've been doing over there. I felt like I got a bit of a harsh deal. I feel that now I've really served my time. Hopefully, while I'm on parole at the moment, hopefully I don't do anything wrong." Having won five races without putting much into it, Gobert felt racing in the U.S. was too easy. In a Q&A press release the team offered, Gobert was asked about his fitness. "I went through a stage where I tried to see how fat I could be and still win. I won some races where I hardly could do my leathers up." It was during that off-season that Gobert realized he needed to make a change. Unfortunately, he didn't have the team to back him. There was a brief flirtation with the MuZ 500cc GP team at the end of the 1999 season, but it came to nothing. Bimota would recruit him for 2000, and he would give them something no one else had in their current configuration - a World Superbike win. In return, he got to ride a dangerous motorcycle for part of a season. He'd been training every day from December of 1999 into the 2000 season and "was really kicking myself because I was really, really motivated and I was really, really into it and I didn't have the machinery to do it. It kind of gave me more motivation because it made me really, really appreciate what I had had in the past. People always say you don't know what you've got until you lose it, and that's exactly what happened to me. I was finally focused and I didn't have any machinery to do it." The race after Phillip Island was at Sugo in Japan, the low point of his season. You may have seen the pictures, Gobert in full flight looking like he'd been yanked up off the bike by the back of his pants. "It was the scariest crash I've ever had because it happened so fast," he remembers. "As soon it whipped straight to the lock, and I knew, straight, away, I said to myself, 'This is going to be pretty big.' And it flicked me over the handlebars. I remember looking at the ground as it was coming and I smacked my head, and as soon as I smacked my head I blacked out. I came to as I was flipping through the gravel." He tumbled into the barriers, the motorcycle following him and the rear disc landing on his left calf causing third-degree burns. He came to in the medical center. "I've never felt that kind of pain before. My whole body was just in agony. I can't even really describe. I was just in severe pain." After the crash, he couldn't move off the couch for a month and a half, nearly two months. When he made his return, the bike continued to be unreliable, continued to spook him. At Hockenheim, his fears pinnacled. "I didn't even want to ride the bike. I was just really, really scared of the engine breaking at Hockenheim through one of the fast corners and killing me. I was honestly worried about dying. I wasn't worried about crashing, I was worried about killing myself." He nearly did. Just as he was about to click sixth gear, he looked back to see a trail of smoke. Panicking, he shut the throttle and pulled off as the Bimota SB8K caught fire, the tire, as well as leathers, covered in oil. "I just could not believe how lucky I was," he says. Had he got the upcoming apex right he'd have crashed into an Armco at over 180 mph. "When that happened, it just made me think, 'Anything can happen.' I didn't want to ride it. Luckily, the team fell through just after that race and I never got to ride it again. It was kind of a blessing, really." The life of a journeyman followed. Stints on the Virgin Yamaha in the British Superbike Series, a ride squeezed onto Kenny Roberts' Proton KR Modenas, and home to Australia where he rode the Advantage Honda CBR929. There was talk of coming back to America in 2000, at first with the CompetitionAccessories.com Ducati team, but eventually with Yamaha. Yamaha's Keith McCarty, now head of the racing department, was in on the decision to hire Gobert. "Honestly, I didn't know Anthony Gobert," McCarty says. "If I saw him walking down the street, I wouldn't have known who he was. I knew his name. Obviously, my background wasn't as much in road racing at that time as it is now. We knew of his results as a team, everybody kind of knew him somewhat." Yamaha, as it turns out, provided the perfect fit and the seat came open at the right time. The company has the resources, manpower, and desire to make him a champion. And they do a better job than anyone at making their riders feel like part of a family. "I think we were looking for talented people," McCarty said. "We certainly knew that Anthony had a checkered past, I guess, when we got him. We, meaning I, and a few other guys around here, certainly put a lot of effort into being part of Anthony's life and pointing out some things that he already knew, but just kind of reminded him of a few things." "To be honest, I was at a point where I knew that I had to change the way that I was living my life and the way that I was going about things because, obviously, I wasn't going anywhere near where I wanted to go," Gobert says. "And I just sat back and said, 'Right, Yamaha came to me with a really good deal and a plan for the future,' and they said, 'Right, we'll give you this if you give us that.' So I made a thing with myself that I would train hard all the time. I wouldn't go out drinking, and then I had a steady girlfriend, so I didn't have the need to go out drinking and chasing women, so that kept me at home training and stuff. I just kind of made a conscious decision to turn things around and I feel I succeeded with that." Gobert's drinking was one of the addictions he's had to conquer, and Yamaha has helped. "Our first year with Anthony, last year, every time we went to dinner, obviously he was under scrutiny by not just the outside people, but us as well," McCarty says. "I really didn't know him. I was trying to get to know him and not just know what he said, but how he acted and what he did. Did things match up? When your sensory things are on full alert when you're trying to get to know some- III body, especially somebody who's been known to have these things in their past, certainly when we went out to dinner, I don't consider myself a drinker, but I know when I went out with him that I didn't have a beer. I had a soft drink or whatever. I had what he had. If he had iced tea, then I had it. If he had lemonade, then I had it. And there were reasons. I didn't want to tempt him to thinking that, it's okay, my boss is having one, I can have one too. We were all very sensitive, we still are very sensitive to people that have addictions to alcohol or whatever. That's what you do if you're trying to do the right thing for people." Not that Gobert doesn't enjoy the occasional beer. Noriyuki Haga, who teamed with Gobert in the 2001 Suzuka 8 Hours, was impressed by his resolve. "He's unbelievable," Haga said in fractured English. "Basically, I like him. 'What do you like to drink?' Anthony, 'Me, always only beer.' So after 8 Hour, Yamaha made a party. So he was there. Already he drink beer, but I think four or five hours, I think 10 liters [about 28 12-ounce cans) he drink beer. Too much. But when he drunk, he very funny, very funny." Gobert doesn't remember drinking that much. Haga, once known as the Japanese Gobert, admitted that this wasn't the sort of behavior you could sustain and still win a championship. McCarty credits Gobert's longtime girlfriend, Suni Dixon, for helping turn Gobert around. "She's with him 24/7. I talk to him at least once a week and a lot of times more, but she's the one that lives every day with him and she's a good person and the three of us all kind of communicate well with each other to kind of help each other. This is just about Anthony. We need to understand what he went through and why. I think I have a pretty good understanding from some other similarities that I know about, let's say. We have talked a lot about that, to try to understand maybe why he developed some of the traits that he did. A lot of the times when you get those things out in the open you learn a little bit." Gobert's main goal in 2001 was to get through the year without problems. The goal wasn't entirely accomplished, but the difficulties were minimized. Daytona was filled with problems, first a broken chain, then a blown tire. Sears Point was a classic victory over American Honda's Nicky Hayden after having earlier won the 600cc Supersport race, the first Yamaha double ever. At Road Atlanta, a rearaxle spacer was inadvertently left out, leaving him stranded at the end of the pit road. Normally, this U III • e n ... _ S • MARCH 6. 2002 21

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