The Go-Show
Anthony Gobert really was the wild-child of 1990s motorcycle racing and I was lucky enough to meet him while working in the WSB paddock in 1996. Gobert was an enigma. He’d been an off-roader who came late to race on the Tarmac. By the time he’d come to road racing in the early 1990s, he had already learned a great deal and had a wild, rear-wheel sliding style. He was teamed up with Troy Corser at Winfield Honda when Troy won the Aussie Superbike title on the aging RC30 and then Goey took the next year’s title on the brand-new RC45. That was important for both Gobert and Honda. But Gobert turned his back on Honda and they lost him to Kawasaki and it was on the green machines in WSB that Anthony showed his mettle. So in demand was he that he stomped off from the Aussie Winfield Honda garage at the 1994 final WSB round at Phillip Island carrying a set of Kawasaki leathers to the Muzzy Kawasaki camp. Thanks to this move, he hit the big time on the world stage. Carl Fogarty was locked in combat with Scott Russell for top honours in that season’s finale and Gobert stuck his oar into the championship challenge, taking a race two win at Phillip Island, pole position and a third. From then on he was associated with the green bikes – and what an association it became. Over the winter of 1994 (after that first WSB win) he had to learn how to ride with a race-style (one up, five down) gearbox on the Muzzy ZXR. 1995 saw three wins as he took fourth place in the title race: these wins came in the USA at Laguna Seca and two at Australia. For 1996 I was the MCN WSB reporter and Anthony and I developed a bit of a rapport. At the first round at Misano, his second race win was ruled out due to a technical infringement on the bike’s carbs. “I know I won that race fair and square,” he later told me. Later that season at Hockenheim, Anthony took sixth in race one and crashed out of race two. He disappeared to town on his scooter and came back to the paddock with a T-shirt saying ‘I’M A LOSER’ on it. He was also carrying two large bottles of Becks… Later he would urinate into Neil Hodgson’s crash helmet and the normally passive Aaron Slight once had to restrain him during a late-night drinking session around the riders’ motorhomes. It was all such a shame, as – chatting to him – he was an engaging and articulate lad, but it seemed that even at his speed the demons overtook him when he’d had a drink or two. So much so, he told me that his team boss Steve Johnson would often come and clear his motorhome out of booze before a race… His relationship with Muzzy would be tainted by a few no-shows towards the end of the 1996 season, which led to him being called ‘the no-show, Go-show.’ He still showed up for the final round that year and won both races… With his off-road-inspired talent, he could slide a ZXR/ ZX-7R like no-one else. He would take six wins in WSB (out of a total of eight) before he tried to transfer his style to 500cc GPS with the Lucky Strike Suzuki team in 1997. Despite talking big, the best he managed alongside Scott Russell was a seventh in Austria. Following on from a DNF at Donington Park a drugs test allegedly showed cannabis in his bloodstream and he was ‘let go’ by Suzuki, all at the age of 21. In 1998 he moved to the Vance & Hines Ducati squad in the USA where he’d either win in style or get caught following another drugs test. In 1999 there was more of the same, along with more wins (including one at V&H home race at Laguna) but another ‘no-show’ at the end of the season saw him leave the team. There was a resurgence in 2000 when he took a Bimota SB8K to a win in Australia while also indulging in some odd 500cc GP appearances and in later years even some British Superbike appearances. Sadly, the wild side of Anthony seemed to have the edge in later years as in 2008 he was convicted of robbing a 70-year-old man and snatching a woman’s purse in Surfer’s Paradise, Australia, where he lived. Since then he’s been hard to track down. Shame, as many considered him one of Australia’s biggest talents on two wheels.