Copyright 2002, Roadracing World Publishing, Inc.
By David Swarts
Yamaha’s Anthony Gobert broke his right fibula in a crash during the Big Kahuna AMA Superbike National event at Road Atlanta, May 17. After giving some time for the dust to settle, Roadracingworld.com caught up to the 27-year-old Australian at his home in Lake Elsinore, California to check on his injury and recovery.
“The injury has turned out to be worse than what first thought,” said Go-Show. “It’s just a matter of seeing how it goes, really. I’ve got quite a few things wrong with my ankle. That’s going to be the thing that takes the longest.”
Gobert lowsided in Road Atlanta’s fast, downhill turn three and appeared, on videotape, to attempt to steer himself as he slid along the pavement at 80 mph before impacting inflatable air barriers placed in front of strawbales and a concrete retaining wall. “I had never slid into an Air Fence before,” pointed out Gobert. “So I didn’t know how good the Air Fence was. I just knew from watching people in the past(Alberto Puig, Wayne Gardner), if you go in feet-first, there’s a chance you could go under the Air Fence and break your leg.
“I was trying to get sideways to go in to kind of disperse the energy better. It just happened too quick, I suppose. It’s only when I watched the tape that one of my legs went straight in, and that was the one that I broke. I thought I was getting my legs out of the way, but obviously that didn’t (happen).”
Gobert was transported to Northeast Georgia Regional Medical Center where his fracture was X-rayed, diagnosed and immobilized in a half-cast within three hours. “In Atlanta, I just got some X-rays straight after it,” said Gobert. “They said to me I’d snapped the fibula, or whatever the back bone is. That was snapped pretty good and wasn’t really lined up. It was a bit out of whack and stuff. They just sort of put a half-sort of cast on it and pretty much kicked me out of the hospital pretty quick. It was pretty weird. I had never experienced anything like that before. I don’t know what the deal was, but they were in a big hurry to get me out of there.
“I just went back to the hotel in Atlanta and just sort of laid in bed. They can’t operate on you for a couple of days anyway, until the swelling goes down. I just chose to go back to the hotel in Atlanta and lay there with my leg up in the air to let the swelling go down for a couple of days, get the X-rays sent off to Dr. Ting for him to examine and decide where to go from there.
“(Dr. Ting) got the X-rays Monday morning and told me that he had to go in there for surgery immediately, because the main problem was I had dislodged my ankle from the impact. I sort of ripped the ankle joint apart nearly a centimeter (0.4-inch) and did the ligaments and all that around my ankle because of that. I suppose it’s like getting a hammer and whacking your ankle nearly a centimeter to one side.
“That’s really the main problem right now. I had to go and get the ankle screwed back together. That’s giving me the most trouble right now. The plate up the back of my leg doesn’t really seem to be a problem, but I’m getting quite a lot pain from the ligaments and the actual screws in the ankle. Luckily, nothing in the ankle was broken.”
Gobert received no definite timeline for his recovery, but indications are that he won’t be back on track any time soon. “They say to me that with the screws and the plate and all that, (Dr. Ting) reckons it’s still like six to eight weeks. In my case, it wasn’t the case of getting the plates to get (back) on the track any quicker. I didn’t have an option because of the injury I had,” said Gobert.
“It’s the kind of the thing where, I’m out of the Championship right now. Obviously, I’m not enjoying sitting on the couch everyday, but I don’t have any option for the first two weeks. I’ve been told I have to just lay on the couch with my leg up in the air. So I’m in the process of doing that, and it’s pretty frustrating. Obviously I want to be on the track riding and representing Yamaha. I just have no option. Right now, I’m just waiting on the two-week period to go back to Dr. Ting to see what the next step is.”
With both the Supersport and Superbike Championships out of the question now, Gobert’s goal is now to come back and win at Laguna Seca during the World Superbike weekend, but the July race weekend is within that six-to-eight-week recovery period. “It puts Laguna Seca in jeopardy,” admitted Gobert. “So we’ll just take it a week at a time and see what position we’re in. My goal is to just make sure my leg is 100% before I come back.
“The way that I ride and how dangerous, obviously, the racetracks in America are, it’s not much point in coming back half-ready and crashing and going into a barrier or something and making the injury twice as bad. That’s the kind of situation I’m in. I need to make sure the leg’s 100% before I come back so it’s strong enough to withstand anything else.”
When asked if the air barriers as installed helped him at all, Gobert said, “It doesn’t look like it on the tape. I’m kind of looking forward to going back to the races to try and sit down with the AMA and try and see what can be done about safety, really. I think right now that the standards in America are pretty poor. I think that it’s pretty stupid of us riders to keep going on like there’s no sort of problem. It’s kind of like, in practice, they never have the Air Fence in the right positions and they always have the most dangerous parts unprotected. It always takes someone to go into a barrier and get injured or we have to sort of bring it up to them.
“I think the way the AMA handled the situation at Sears Point — how they really got into us about saying about how poor the safety standards are at Sears Point — it shows the AMA’s true lack of care for the riders’ safety. Like they made it quite clear to me that they don’t care about the riders one bit. All they care about is themselves. I think it’s about time us riders stand up and try and get something done safety-wise.
“In my crash, it’s not really a huge injury, (but) it’s still an injury that shouldn’t have happened and could’ve definitely been prevented. A lot of people said that the Air Fence wasn’t strapped in properly and stuff like that. When you watch the tape, the Air Fence just rips away damn easy. I knew that there was something that wasn’t right. It all just ripped away. It should have absorbed me and it didn’t. I felt a little bit of Air Fence on my shoulder and that’s it.
“It’s pretty damned pathetic that I have to be sitting on the couch here because some f**king idiot didn’t put the Air Fence in properly. What is it? Is it a two-bit f**king circus or is it a professional f**king motorcycle organization?”
When asked for a possible solution, Gobert said, “I don’t know. I think the first start would be to make sure we have Air Fence and make sure that it’s strapped in, you know? It seems to me like there were a lot of people saying that the Air Fence wasn’t strapped in properly. I’d like to even get to the bottom of that and even see if it was. That’s just typical of the AMA for something not to be right and somebody to get injured. I mean, somebody had to get killed at Fontana until they realized, ‘Oh, we should put a big barrier up here (to) stop the bikes (from) going across.’ In the meantime, some poor guy has been killed and his family is at a severe loss.
“The AMA, they just don’t care about the riders’ safety. I think it’s about time all the riders kind of stood up and kind of got together and maybe form a bit of a riders-type union. Because, I mean Sears Point, there’s just no way that we should have been racing at Sears Point. That’s the most dangerous deathtrap I’ve ever had to race on in my entire life. That kind of put me off the whole weekend. I think it put a lot of riders off. I’m just thankful to God that I didn’t tuck the front and go into one of the barriers going four or five times faster, which would’ve happened at Sears Point. We just got lucky that no one went into any of the barriers, because I’m sure someone would’ve been killed if they had’ve crashed into the barriers.
“The guy from Sears Point is ringing me up telling me how I’m not gonna believe the track, how awesome the track is now and all this money they’ve spent on it, you know. It’s just a joke. Because, I went there and the track’s the most dangerous I’ve ever seen it. We have to really do something about this or more riders are going to get injured or killed. It’s just stupid.
“I’m glad you called, because I’d kind of like to get something out there, like my opinion. Obviously, it’s going to end up in a fine or something from the AMA, (but) people need to start standing up to the AMA because it’s our lives and everything and I think we have a right to preserve our own lives. Maybe you should go around at Pike’s Peak and ask, ‘Anthony says that something needs to be done. What do you guys reckon?’
I personally don’t think we should be racing at Daytona,” added Gobert. “I think that this year they made a major step forward with (Dunlop) trying to improve the tire life. That’s kind of a bonus, but I mean, still the tires keep coming apart. I had a tire come apart at about 175 or 180 (mph, in 2001), whatever it was. I tell you, that was pretty scary with the thing going sixth gear, wide open and having the tire come apart, lock up in the swingarm and have the bike go completely lock-to-lock down the front straightaway. That’s pretty scary to think the tires do come apart there quite often.
“I just think when I was following Miguel Duhamel over the start/finish line. What were the Hondas doing? 190-something mph? And he was sixth-gear flat out with smoke coming off the rear tire. I think that the motorcycles and everything have far outgrown Daytona.
“I don’t want to get into Daytona too much. I think we need more Air Fence, and we need to make sure that it’s put in properly or it’s useless. Obviously, it’s not being installed correctly. And I think a lot of the barriers are put in way too close, that the AMA should have a word to the tracks about trying to pull some of the barriers back. Even at Atlanta where I went in, there’s no reason why they can’t excavate that and pull that barrier out. There’s nothing there behind that. I don’t know. So many things really, really aggravate me with the safety standards in America and the unprofessionalism of the AMA. A lot of things need to be looked at.”
(Note: Air Fence is a trademark of Airfence Safety Systems of Australia, and the inflatable soft barrier Gobert encountered was actually an Alpina Air Module. Both brands are FIM homologated and are used for World Superbike and MotoGP events. There is some question as to whether or not the Alpina modules Gobert encountered were properly installed and secured at the top and bottom tie-down points.)
