Giles Belbin
Feature
n Saturday February 17, 1951
this publication celebrated its
Diamond Jubilee year with
a lavish event held at London’s Royal
Albert Hall.
Little expense was spared. An orchestra
played and there were dancing troupes
and acrobats and jugglers. The nation’s
greatest club cyclists rode a race on
rollers for a “gold, wristlet watch,” and
Britain’s Reg Harris battled Australia’s Sid
Patterson and France’s Maurice Verdeun
in a race of champions. The guest of
honour was “the almost legendary
Italian roadman,” Fausto Coppi.
In the audience that night was Iris
Marsh, the 16-year-old daughter of Dave
Marsh, at that time Britain’s only official
road race world champion. Marsh was
one of Cycling’s invited guests and was
due to take to the stage. The Marshes
were a cycling family: in 1926 Dave had
married Florence Shambrook, a founding
member of the Rosslyn Ladies’ Cycling
Club, and a year later they had twins,
David and Peter, who both went on to
race. Iris, seven years younger than her
brothers, wasn’t yet allowed to ride and
when the invitation from Cycling came
through the Marsh family letterbox it
was for Dave, Flo and the two boys only.
Iris wasn’t included.
Proud daughter
Fast forward 66 years and I am sat in the
neat living room of the home now shared
by Iris and her husband Eric Beauchamp.
Dave Marsh:
Britain’s f irst road
world champion
In 1922 Dave Marsh became Britain’s first UCI road world champion,
winning the amateur road race in Shropshire. This is his story...
Iris is now 83 years old, Eric 86. Both
have cycling in their blood. Eric rode
with the Crescent Wheelers, Iris with
the Rosslyn. Eric later tells me that he
once beat Tom Simpson in a ‘25’, some
claim to fame: “He was a bit younger
than me, about 19... I was third and he
was fourth.” On the wall is a painting
of the Col d’Izoard and on the table in
front of me is a plate of sandwiches and
a steaming mug of tea. We are talking
about that night in 1951.
Iris eventually managed to get an
invite and was able to take part in the
celebrations, although not with her mum
and brothers. “I was put in a different
box to the rest of the family,” Iris says. “I
wasn’t with mum and the boys because
I was an afterthought, so I was sitting
with people I didn’t know. Dad went on
the stage and I remember saying to the
other people: ‘That’s my dad.’ I don’t
know if they believed me or not, but
things like that that made me think, yes,
this is quite something.”
Dave Marsh was one of four brothers.
Born in 1894 and raised in Stepney, East
London, Marsh started cycling seriously
in 1913, attracted to the sport by a friend
of one of his brothers who was a member
of the Crescent Wheelers. “Seeing others
riding speed machines and going in
for races, I did the same,” Marsh said
in 1920. He had a natural ability and
quickly won the club championship
before the onset of war. During the war
he rode whenever he had the chance and
in 1919 decided to take his racing a little
more seriously.Worlds first
The decision quickly paid off. That
season Marsh claimed his first win in
open competition, winning the Forest 50,
but his breakthrough came the following
year. Slight in stature at a little over
five feet in height, Marsh developed a
reputation as a rider who was able to
push harder than others when the going
got tough and in 1920 he scored six major
wins, including the inaugural North Road
CC Memorial 50 and a successful defence
of the Forest 50 in terrible conditions;
a ride some ranked as the outstanding
performance of the year. Marsh was
quick and in 1920 was considered the
country’s leading road rider.
He gained his first taste of
international competition, travelling to
Antwerp as part of the Olympic team.
Following a fall and a series of punctures,
he could only manage 26th in the 175km
individual time trial but the experience
was invaluable. “The trainers looked
after me splendidly,” Marsh said at the
end of the season. “I felt wonderfully
well under their treatment and it opened
my eyes to the benefits of rest as well as
massage.” These were lessons that he
took into the following season.
In 1921 the UCI organised its first
amateur Road World Championships
(professionals would have to wait
another six years). Marsh, now described
as a “marvel of consistency,” with
“more fastest-time successes since the
war than any other rider,” was part of
Britain’s four-man team that travelled
to Denmark for a race that, like the24 | December 7, 2017 | Cycling Weekly