Young, Fit & Gone - Clinton Grybas dies at 32

WHEN Clinton Grybas failed to appear early for yesterday's shift on radio station 3AW his colleagues grew nervous. He was a meticulous man who always turned up to work two hours beforehand. As the midday show went to air without him, his radio producer was almost frantic with worry.
By that time, his body had been found, lying face down on the bedroom floor of his 15th-storey apartment in Southbank. There were no visible injuries and no sign of foul play, police said later. All that remains is the mystery of what killed an apparently healthy young man, due to turn 33 next month, who held the promise of becoming Australia's pre-eminent sporting commentator.
The only clue to yesterday's shock death came the week before last season's AFL qualifying finals. He called in sick one Saturday in September, missing his commentating duties for only the second time in 12 years, after waking with a splitting headache and a nasty bump on his head after sleepwalking in the night.
He laughed off the incident at the time, saying he initially thought he must have been knocked unconscious by night burglars. Graeme Bond, 3AW's football director, wondered yesterday whether the incident was an alarm bell.
"All I can think of is there was some link. Maybe he died from a possible aneurysm and maybe that was a warning. We don't know," he said.
His manager, Ricky Nixon, and his bosses at both 3AW and Fox Sports met police yesterday afternoon to discuss the coming autopsy.
The news has stunned his colleagues and friends. Some of them had last seen Grybas on Friday night, looking tanned, fit, relaxed and happy at a barbecue in Port Melbourne.
His brother, Ashley Grybas, said yesterday his family was devastated.
3AW program director Clark Forbes said his colleagues were in disbelief. "He was the best young bloke, a huge talent with his whole life before him," he said. "He was already one of the best sporting commentators in this country."
AFL Commission chairman Mike Fitzpatrick praised Grybas as potentially the best sports broadcaster in Australia, saying his death would cause "genuine bereavement at the AFL".
3AW announcer Dwayne Russell, who was due to appear on air with Grybas yesterday, said his colleague had always looked in good health. "He was a broadcaster who really didn't have any ceiling. If anybody was the next Denis Cometti it was probably Clinton," he said.
After starting in his early 20s calling Friday night football on ABC radio, Grybas won the Australian Commercial Radio award for best sports presenter last year. He excelled at every sport he touched, most famously calling the gold medal win of the Australian women's water polo team at the Sydney Olympics.
Recently he had told Fox Sports co-host Gerard Healy that he hoped to call future Olympic Games. "He was extraordinary, simply because he never had a bad day, he was meticulous in every aspect of his life," Healy said. "I used to have to tie a Windsor knot for him before every show — that was the only chink I ever saw in his armour."
Laurenna Toulmin, a former 3AW producer, was in Ballarat with family when the call came from the station that her long-time boyfriend had not shown for work. She called their Southbank neighbours, and a building manager unlocked the couple's apartment to find Grybas on the floor. He was taken to hospital by ambulance, where he was pronounced dead.