I received a call on Saturday from Aussie Journo Mark Bracks. "Bracksie" is a longtime friend of the Gobert family and has known Anthony since he was a Supercross rider in Oz.

Essentially the situation is that Anthony nor the Gobert family control Anthony's social media. Anything posted isn't coming from Anthony or the family, Bracksie says.

It's true that Anthony is in hospice care with organs failing. He's been there for some time. The eye-poppingly scary video posted on social media of Anthony was shot last August or September.

Many people were sucked down into the Anthony vortex over the years, including myself. I found him a lawyer (Stephen Hewitt) when he was bounced by the FIM and AMA for failing drug tests. When he ran into visa problems one year, I put him on to a guy in the State department that I met in the pit lane at Laguna Seca USGP in the early 1990s. For a time we helped him build and run his web site. He was a very hard guy to say no to.


After the Bimota WSBK win the team augured and Anthony was set loose. I literally bumped into him one afternoon at Misano WSBK and we spent a few hours together walking around the track and watching practice. I saw then that Anthony's relationship with fans was very personal. He was mobbed in the back of Misano by fans; his memory was clear then--he'd remember fans from previous interactions. "Didn't I see you at Daytonar?" he asked one couple. They were almost brought to tears that a racing God like Tony G remembered them. He always stopped when a fan said something to him, he looked them in the eyes and always thanked them. It wasn't an act; Goey was a very genuine person. I bet he said "Thank you" 5000 times that afternoon. Our plan to walk around Misano was scuttled because Anthony stopped for every fan. Every one. He was like that throughout his racing career.

Once, in a race at Sears Point his bike failed because Tony G was pulling so hard on the clip-on that it broke at the weld and he crashed. His bike came back to the truck, but Anthony never did. Was he in the medical center? No. Had he been transported? No. Was he walking back? No. Where is he?

He had scaled the fence and joined a crowd of enthusiasts enjoying beer and spectating the race, with his racing gear casually tied around his waist. I believe there was never a moment when then mechanic Tony Romo felt closer to death than when he was tasked with locating Go-Show and bringing him back to the Yamaha team's area. Romo successfully found him, but Gobert's loyal fans were reluctant to part with him. This highlighted the unique bond that Tony G had cultivated with his fans. On the contrary, Mat Mladin never seemed to establish any such a connection, and it was evident that this fact troubled him deeply. However, what Mat failed to recognize was that, apart from Rossi, hardly any other rider had managed to forge such a profound connection with their fans.

Bracks and I fondly recalled the golden era of the Go-Show. We experienced numerous extraordinary moments during the reign of this show, truly indescribable. One unforgettable memory was his debut victories aboard Rob Muzzy's motorcycles when Goey hopped onto what was originally Terry Rymer's Kawasaki, without any modifications, and swiftly surged to the front, claiming victory. I can't imagine what that must have been like for Rymer to watch. Another memorable day was when he triumphed over DuHamel at Road America. And let's not forget his remarkable win at Laguna Seca on the gear-driven Muzzy bike. The double at Sears Point—beating the late Nicky Hayden, no small feat.

The curtain is coming down on the Go-Show. Anthony seemed to be two people in the same body—one, the Anthony we all remember. The other, when he was using drugs and alcohol, was a monster. The monster has won but no one who ever saw Gobert at his best—his rapport with his fans—can forget him. I know I won't.