Rodney Gould was a famous rider for Yamaha. Rodney was one of the first riders (together with Kent Andersson) who changed the image of "dirty riders" in black by changeing into white leathers and wearing full-face helmets instead of the old "pudding-base" style ones. (See picture 4#)

Here you see him early in his Yamaha career working on one of the very first TR models during an US event. With him is his US mechanic Randy Hall. (click for large picture). Randy told me during his visit on February 26th that this is a 1970 picture. (pages 1-2-3)

Mechanic Randy Hall and Rodney Gould

On the machine you can see the coils of the first experimental FEMSA ignition Kent Andersson and Rodney Gould were using. The Femsa engineer Signor Gonzalez (of course nicknamed "Speedy Gonzalez"!) travelled with them to the Grand Prix. The early versions of the ignition had severe problems with exploding rotors due to the high centrifugal force.

Randy was also with us this year during some of our YCRT events, although a bit older!