Van den Goorbergh won the Dutch 250cc road racing national championship in 1991 and began his Grand Prix career that year in the 250cc class, running his own VD Goorbergh-Aprilia entry. He continued in 250cc through 1996, showing steady improvement across six seasons. Competing for Honda-backed teams in 1995 and 1996, he achieved his best 250cc championship results of twelfth and eleventh respectively, with a fourth-place finish at the 1996 Dutch TT among his highlights.
Van den Goorbergh stepped up to the 500cc class in 1997, racing a privately sponsored Honda NSR500V for the Millar MQP team. He placed nineteenth in the championship that year with 29 points. His performances attracted the attention of the German manufacturer MuZ, who hired him for the 1999 season aboard their MuZ 500.
The 1999 season brought the most striking qualifying achievement of his career. Racing the underdog MuZ machinery, he took two pole positions — one at the Circuit de Catalunya in Barcelona and one at Brno in the Czech Republic — results widely regarded as unexpected given the relative competitiveness of the MuZ. He scored 40 points to finish sixteenth in the championship that year.
He raced with Mollenaar Racing (TSR-Honda) in 2000, finishing thirteenth with 85 points and recording a fifth-place result at the British Grand Prix. In 2001 he joined the Roberts-Proton KR3 team of Kenny Roberts, finishing thirteenth again with 65 points.
The 2002 season marked his transition into the new MotoGP class. Running the older Honda NSR500 for the Kanemoto team, he accumulated 60 points for thirteenth in the championship. A notable highlight was his fifth-place finish at the Australian Grand Prix at Phillip Island, where he crossed the line just three hundredths of a second behind third-placed Tohru Ukawa.
Van den Goorbergh competed in the Supersport World Championship from 2003 to 2005. His ability in mixed or wet conditions remained a defining quality, and it was on show at the 2005 Chinese Grand Prix at Shanghai, run in wet weather. Called up as a late substitute for the injured Makoto Tamada at Konica Minolta Honda, he started from nineteenth on the grid and climbed to a sixth-place finish.
In 2006 and 2007, rather than competing in championship rounds, van den Goorbergh spent two seasons testing MotoGP tyres for Michelin. During the same period he raced in the European Enduro Championships, Dutch trial championships, and Supermoto competitions.
Van den Goorbergh broadened his competitive horizons by entering the Dakar Rally in 2009 on a motorcycle, finishing seventeenth overall and taking the best rookie award that year. He returned to the Dakar in 2010 in the buggy category but did not finish.
Across his 165 Grand Prix starts, van den Goorbergh scored no race wins or podiums but took 2 pole positions and accumulated 466 championship points. His son Zonta van den Goorbergh followed him into professional motorcycle racing, competing in Moto2.