The world will unfortunately never know how great Anthony Gobert could have been. image by tim huntington

Anthony Gobert is to 1990's racing what the rock band The Replacements were to 1980's pop music. Unable to play by the established rules, The Replacements spit in the face of music industry success and, thus, never made the leap to the top echelon like their colleagues, REM and U2. It cost them. Today, The Replacements are little more than an answer to a trivia question about the 1980's Minneapolis music scene, while REM and U2 continue to spew out albums and happily fill arenas.

Gobert is the archetypal flawed genius whose existence, like that of 'The Placemats', will forever be insulated by layers of controversy. Gobert won Superbike races and thrilled crowds the world over, but substance-abuse issues flared up on a near semi-annual basis and cost him championships, race wins, and finally, the ability to deliver on his massive talent at the Grand Prix level. Today, Anthony Gobert lives and races in relative obscurity in Australia, while the kid who grew up across the road from him, Mat Mladin, has won six US Superbike titles and is a multi-millionaire.

When it worked for The Replacements, their music was bright and original; it made you wonder why other well-established bands couldn't produce something so simple and at the same time so wonderful. Similarly, with the Go Show there were stretches where he could do no wrong, as if racing were magic and he were Houdini. Gobert raced for two Ducati teams while in America—and also for Yamaha—notching wins on both brands. While he wasn't as personally successful on the Yamaha as he was on the Ducati, unquestionably he was at his happiest, and cleanest, while he raced for Yamaha US. When he raced for Vance and Hines Ducati (and also for Suzuki in Grand Prix) Gobert's exploits—true or not—were transmitted through the paddock on a daily basis, the stories sometimes becoming more outlandish by the week. Once, late at night and outside a well-known race bar in the Midwest, it appeared for a few moments like Gobert might re-live the final John Belushi scene from Animal House,. He seemed to be mulling a swing on a torn banner strung across the street into a convertible. Only instead of being dressed as a pirate like Belushi, Go-Show was, well, mostly nude.

What made the difference for McCarty was that this wasn't the first time he'd had to deal with a young person with a substance abuse or alcohol problem. "I've dealt with that in my own family," McCarty confessed ...

Conversely, when he raced Superbike for Yamaha US, Gobert was in excellent physical and mental shape, and perhaps, more importantly, his substance-abuse problems and partying appeared reined in. During his Yamaha period, very few stories circulated about Gobert's partying. How and why this clarity, this sobriety, occurred when he raced for Yamaha is an intriguing question.

Keith McCarty has worked in Yamaha's racing department for thirty years. His background includes being a mechanic for Yamaha motocross legend Bob Hannah and taking over the entire racing department in the 1980's. McCarty, to say the least, has a reputation as a no-nonsense manager. At the somewhat recent Yamaha media introduction day of Yamaha's various race teams, McCarty publicly stated how he saw Yamaha's race teams shaping up and what the goals are for their riders. In an example of McCarty's candor, he described one internecine race team schism like this: "Josh Herrin," he said, "wants Ben Bostrom's paycheck and he knows how he's going to get it: he needs to beat Ben."

Go-Show. A beautiful loser with the most amazing ability when astride a motorcycle. He is the sport's patron saint of what may have been. image by dean adams

McCarty oversaw the factory race team while Anthony Gobert rode for Yamaha and he worked closely with Gobert in 2001 and 2002. For years, McCarty has resisted speaking about his relationship with Gobert in anything more than a very superficial manner, preferring perhaps to let the record stand for itself—a record that, on and off the track, was impressive. On the diminutive 750cc Yamaha YZF-R7, Gobert won races and beat many other "name" riders such as then future world champion Nick Hayden who, at the time, rode for American Honda in the U.S.

Six years have passed since Anthony Gobert last raced for Yamaha, and recently McCarty finally agreed to talk about his relationship with the troubled phenom of late twentieth and early twenty-first century racing.

Kicking this off, McCarty bristled slightly when told that he was one of the few team managers who was actually able to control Anthony Gobert.

"I didn't control him," McCarty explained emphatically, "I think that's where some people might have run into problems with him in the past—that they tried to control him. I didn't, really."

Seemingly for every person who wanted Gobert to get in, and stay in, a Twelve-Step Program of recovery for his issues with alcohol and/or drugs, there is correspondingly someone who saw Gobert's plight as unfathomable, feeling that Gobert should have shown some backbone, found some self- discipline and simply snapped out of it, realizing the bigger picture and that, in order to be a world championship rider, he'd have to largely give up his partying ways. Get help or get over it. Many who felt this way seemed to be rival riders.

Truth be told, Gobert was hardly the only top level rider of that era rumored to dabble in booze and illicit drugs. The difference between Gobert's actions and his contemporaries is that Gobert's were almost flagrantly flamboyant, reminiscent of an action scene from an Errol Flynn movie, whereas the suspected colleagues were much more covert. Call it careful, smart, or lucky but others were never caught. Gobert was caught.

McCarty recognized early on the futility of these two methods of approaching Gobert's problems and he actually rejected them both. Instead of demanding weekly drug tests or telling him that his future was too bright to risk by using alcohol and/or drugs, McCarty just sat him down, talked to him and tried to put himself in Gobert's shoes.

"Sometimes you meet that wild child that needs somebody to talk to, needs somebody to lean on," McCarty remembers, "I think I was approachable, and, certainly, he opened himself up to me. I think I understood some of his issues. They're deeper than just...any time a kid, 16, 18, 20 years old, has alcohol issues or whatever they may be, there's more to the story than what meets the surface. It's not just because he liked beer or whatever. I, I guess, took the time to try to understand that, and talk to him about it, and try to get him to understand it."

Gobert attended rehab at least twice, but after the very public stay in late 1998 he denied that he was indeed a alcoholic or an addict, that he had attended rehab simply as a condition to get his racing license reinstated.

What made the difference for McCarty was that this wasn't the first time he'd had to deal with a young person with a substance abuse or alcohol problem.

"I've dealt with that in my own family," McCarty confessed, "so that was the other side. Because Anthony's probably biggest thing was alcohol. I think he liked to drink, and he'd get carried away, or whatever. There's a lot of people, whether they're a racer or not, that go through that, too. So I wouldn't hold that, and I didn't hold that, against him. I knew that he was a talented guy. That's what we were trying to bring out, was that talent, and I think we were able to do it in a pretty good way." McCarty also praised Gobert's late girlfriend, Suni Dixon, for helping stay on the right path while at Yamaha.

Gobert hid his alcohol issues when he raced for other teams, and honestly, at times later in his career there was no point in hiding it. Gobert was disqualified from the World Superbike race at Laguna Seca in 1998 for failing a drug test, and was also suspended from U.S. Superbike racing action that season for the same reason. His speed kept him employed. Gobert returned to action at the December Daytona tire test, overweight or under-leathered, depending on your perspective. Regardless, he was able to burn fast laps. Ducati re-signed him. Sadly, Gobert's relationship deteriorated with Vance & Hines and Ducati, which later led him to ride for a variety of teams in world championship racing.

Riders beaten by Anthony Gobert read almost like a who's who of racing. Here's Gobert on the podium at Fontana with future world champ Hayden on his left. image by tim huntington

McCarty met it all head-on. "I told him I can relate to where he's at. Some of (Gobert's problems) were personal and family matters that I needed to understand and know. So his upbringing, just—he was the oldest of his brothers, and so that's a different place, more than anybody can realize. It puts them in a difficult place to always be the role model, always—it puts pressure on them all the time. And man, when you're a kid, I don't know that you really want that pressure, but you've inherited it. And so, telling him how I understood that, he knew what I was saying was the way it is, because that's how it affected him.

In 2006, an Australian newspaper reported that Gobert confessed to being heroin addict. However his mother said at the time that the confession was old news and he had completed rehab since the report came out and was again clean. The science of human addiction is an interesting concept. Some therapists trained to deal with hard-core addicts don't judge relapses as failures, but see them as the reality of the situation. Many addicts relapse multiple times before ever becoming sober or clean, and some never recover. Not using relapses as a means to draw a line in the sand seems key in the recovery process. Which is more or less like what McCarty did with Gobert.

"I think I opened the door for him to realize I'm not there to be his disciplinarian," McCarty says. "I'm there to be his friend. And if he ever needed me for any reason, whatever it was, any time of the day, he could call me, and he knew he could. And so if he wanted to have a beer, I didn't say, "Anthony, you can't have that beer." I'd say, "Okay."

"We're on the way back from Malaysia after a test," McCarty recalls, "and he really opened up after a beer or two on the plane. We had a really great conversation. I just let him know that it was okay. I wasn't trying to be their disciplinarian. I understood where he was at, and it was okay."

Gobert arguably had his best years when he raced for the tuning-forks brand. They were, without a doubt his happiest. image by joe weirzbicki

Maybe to those who didn't know him, or were unsympathetic to his plight, Gobert seemed an evil figure, or just someone without the discipline to be a sporting hero in the modern era of increased media scrutiny. However, to those who knew him, largely, the charismatic and talented Go-Show is remembered as a kind and generous person. This is especially true with his fans.

"I was amazed, really, at how many people just came up to him while he was on Yamaha and just appreciated him being back out there," McCarty says. "The Go-Show. He had quite a cult, let's say, of Anthony Gobert fans. He was the illustrated guy, with the tattoos. He was a bit of a rebel in a time when maybe that wasn't fashionable. But he made it work, and he was a special rider. I think he was one of the most talented riders ever. If you needed a lap, if you needed to get there in qualifying, Anthony's your guy. He just got on the bike. Whatever problems you had, they'd go away for that lap. He just made it work. For us at that time, we were getting back into Superbike with the 750, and we had a bike that I think was okay, but certainly, internally, we hadn't been there for a while. I think he just raised the level of the team because of his abilities, putting it on the front row, winning races, and all that. It was really a special time."

Rumors of The Replacements re-forming kick up dust every few years, with fans of the band hoping for just one more show with what's left of the infamous pop group. Similarly, not a month goes past that we don't hear from a Gobert fan wondering what he's up to these days and if he'll ever make a comeback.