Rod Coleman (1926-2019)

The talented Kiwi who was the 1954 Junior TT winner, as well as a successful businessman and motorcycle restorer, recently died in his local Whanganui Hospital, New Zealand, aged 93.

- 

New Zealander Roderick (Rod)William Coleman, who died on August 8, 2019, started racing as a teenager. In1949 his father Percy, who was a racing star in the family’s native country as well as a motorcycle trader, helped his son secure passage to Europe, the goal being that the young man would set the road racing world alight on his Isle of Man TT debut.

Unfortunately, it didn’t quite go like that initially, as Rod crashed his AJS 7R in practice and broke his jaw, which was set – wrongly. But young Coleman knew it wasn’t right; he’d gone to medical school in 1946 but after a couple of years quit having decided it wasn’t what he wanted to do. Still, his medical training paid off, as he reset his jaw and taped himself up. For a month he ‘ate’ through a straw, and while his TT debut was delayed, he was able to race in the Dutch TT and Belgian GP.

Though he’d not set the scene ablaze (he wasn’t classified in either 1949 Belgian GPs and seemingly crashed in the 350cc Dutch) his performances on the British mainland had caught the eye of JockWest, AMC competition chief, who was to ‘keep an eye’ on the prematurely balding aspiring racer, who looked more like the young doctor he was initially set to become, than someone on the motorcycle racing path down which he was now headed.