Rob rides again

Andrew Mathieson
GASPING to breathe and only able to wiggle his toes and some fingers, Lara’s Rob Gaylard could only see the lights of planes flying over.
The avid cyclist, lying motionless in the darkness, thought he was going to die from the late-night ride.
“That was the longest 50 minutes of my life, waiting for the ambulance to come,” the former National Nine News sports anchor says.
After rolling behind a pack of riders, the front of his bike had clipped an errant jockey wheel along the road out the back of Little River.
Rob was catapulted into the air and landed on a grass embankment, breaking his collarbone, AC joint, shoulder blade and ribs while also chipping bones in his neck.
Another cyclist was forced to place his knee firmly behind Rob’s shoulder to opens up his airways as he drifted in and out of consciousness.
“I couldn’t get any air in,” Rob recalls.
“I started to really panic and I honestly thought I was dying.”
While spending more than two weeks in Geelong Hospital after this year’s Good Friday eve fall, doctors compared Rob’s injuries to someone running a chainsaw through his insides.
But Rob’s battle to resume life again took another turn.
As he healed from his bike injuries, doctors found a tumour.
They later say the bike crash saved his life.
“It isn’t killing you yet but it isn’t looking good,” Rob repeats their words.
Two months later Rob is forced to sleep on a recliner chair in the loungeroom.
He still can’t lie down and has flashbacks from the accident.
But life is too short and sure enough the one-time apprentice butcher is again back working.
Rob jokes that he takes on 10 different jobs.
“Sometimes I worry about where our next cheque is going to come from but the past 10 years of my life has probably been the best,” he observes.
Rob still hosts the odd sportsmen’s night with the schtick he used to entertain teammates at Redan Football Club.
The gigs led Rob to regular appearances on television after business partner and former Richmond premiership player John Northey knocked back the offer.
“They wanted someone to do Football Scoreboard but I’d just moved to Ballarat,” Rob reminisces, “so I stood in the car park of the television studios for five minutes and talked about the league I just left.”
Broken collarbones from playing footy couldn’t keep Rob off the air.
He checked himself out of hospital to read the scores that night, albeit with a crooked neck.
A succession of spot-on tips on air at the races attracted a phone call from straight-shooting Channel Nine news director John Sorrell.
The country lad knocked back Sorrell’s job offer – twice – before eventually relenting.
Then Sorrell summoned Rob into his office after less than two days in the newsroom.
“Monday night, Gaylard, you read on the news,” his boss announced.
Gaylard in; Max Walker out.
“The first night I sat in I was in awe of Brian Naylor – he had the halo around him,” Rob grins.
Rob loved breaking sport stories but after five years he grew tired of the politics and “the egos that went with it”.
He cleared his desk first rather than waiting for a tap on the shoulder.
“Without mentioning names, there was one bloke from Wide World of Sports who started knifing me,” Rob tells.
“It got to the stage where he was saying things behind my back.”
But Rob denies bitterness.
Good mate and racecaller Johnny Tapp offered him some words of advice.
“You’ll always have respect,” Tapp told Gaylard, “and respect is always worth more than money.”