Tetsuya Harada

Born June 1970. In the midst of the massive surge in Japan of the "Bike Boom" of the 80's, Harada made his debut in pocket bike racing at the age of 10. Working through the mini-bike races, he signed up with former Yamaha motocross rider Tadao Suzuki's team. Here he took the 1987 Tsukuba Novice champions title in the 125cc class, and the national junior championship for the 125cc class in 1988. In the following year, he received an International A class racing license, and therefore used it to step up into the Yamaha Factory Team with new sponsor Nescafe. Harada achieved a ranking of 4th in the Japanese 250cc class. Then in 1992, he secured the championship after neck-and-neck races throughout the season with Tadayuki Okada (Honda). In addition to this, his successes gave Harada his ticket to the World GP250 where he won the World Championship title in 1993 at the young age of 23. Harada was known for his cleverness and his cool riding style which got him named "Cool Devil" and attracted many fans in Europe. He was ranked 2nd overall in 1995, and then moved to Aprilia in 1997. From here he continued to race while moving between the GP500 and GP250 classes. He ended his racing career at the end of the 2002 season.