A member of the Crescent Wheelers, the
Shaftesbury CC and the University CC
during his career, Dave Marsh signed the
Golden Book of Cycling in 1949. As well as
his World Championship title, his citation
includes a reference to one of his biggest
early wins — the inaugural North Road CC
Memorial 50.
Organised in memory of six members of
the North Road CC who died in the Great
War, the inaugural race was held in July
1920 and was invitation only, with the 12
best performing 50 riders of the season
selected, the first of its kind.
The event was not without incident. On
the outskirts of one village an “over-zealous
police officer” stopped several of the
competitors and interrogated them,
costing them valuable time. It later cameto light that the previous week a rider
competing in an open ‘50’ had collided with
a resident and that had prompted the police
officer’s interest.
Marsh wasn’t one of those stopped and
the “pocket Hercules of the Shaftesbury
CC” won by 46 seconds, battling a strong
wind to secure what was at that time his
greatest win.
The event was hailed a great success
with the hope that it would long continue.
The following year Marsh successfully
defended his title, beating the course
record and applying “perfect judgement.”
“He rides his own pace, without ever
being flurried or perturbed by his rivals,”
reported Cycling.
“No man can say what performances he
might accomplish next.”Dredge to race tandems and in 1922 the
pair set a record for London to Brighton
and back, knocking an incredible 18
minutes off the previous best time.
After another Olympic ride in
1924 where he finished 24th, Marsh
opened a cycle shop but ultimately
wasn’t able to make
it work financially.
After a spell with the
Ariel Works company,
in the 1930s Marsh
entered London’s
East End docks as a
maintenance worker.
The bike would remain
a major part of his
life and during the
Second World War he
undertook weekend
rides to Rugby to see Iris and her
brothers, who had been evacuated.
Dave Marsh died in 1960 after
suffering ill health. He was 66 years
old. Iris and Eric tell me they think
his work at the docks may have
contributed to his death. “They gave
him all the rotten jobs because of his
size,” says Eric. “He was a small man.
He used to be able to get into the
boilers to clean them.”
“He got half a crown extra to do that,
because it was a dirty job,” says Iris.
“I think his cancer was to do with that.
Nowadays they would have masks,
wouldn’t they? They didn’t then.”was an undoubtedly poor showing
by the other nations, this publication
described Britain’s performance as a
“striking triumph”.
Full medal jacket
Iris carefully hands over the medal her
father won that day 95 years ago. It’s a
wonderful piece of cycling memorabilia
— the first road World Championship
gold medal won by a British rider — and
I feel privileged to hold it. In fact the
medal was nearly lost by the family when
one of Marsh’s jackets went to the dry
cleaners. “He always carried his World
Championship medal around with him
in a little leather pouch,” Iris tells me. “It
went everywhere. I don’t really know
why, maybe he thought it was safer there.
Apparently when the jacket went to the
cleaners there was an absolute panic
because the medal was still in there.” By
the time the family realised, the jacket
had already been cleaned but the medal
remained safely tucked in the pocket.
“We were lucky to get it back,” Iris says.
Marsh’s World Championship was the
pinnacle of a successful career. In the
1920s he was reported to have recorded
“more fastest time successes since
the war than any other rider.” He also
regularly joined forces with club-mate
“The jacket went
to the cleaners
and there was an
absolute panic
because it had
his medal in it”
I ask Iris what her father was like as
a person. She pauses. “There’s an article
where a reporter is interviewing my dad
and he talks about him standing in a
corner,” she says.
“That was his way of not being in
the limelight. He was just so quiet and
unassuming. He was
like that in all
aspects of his life.
“He didn’t talk
much about his cycling.
I actually learned
more about him when
I started cycling myself,
realising that people
were talking about
my dad, saying: ‘Oh
you’re Dave Marsh’s
daughter.’ I’d never
really known how famous he was, or
how important he was until people used
to talk to me about him. It did come as a
bit of a surprise.”
I ask if it feels like his Worlds win has
been forgotten. “I think the story has got
lost a little,” Iris says. “But then you get
a chance like this to talk about him, it’s
nice to know that he is still thought about
as a champion.”
“I can talk to members at my club
about him,” adds Eric, “and they will say:
‘Well, who was he? What did he do?’”
There’s a simple answer to those
questions. He was Dave Marsh and he was
Britain’s first road world champion.Marsh and the North Road CC Memorial 50
Cycling Weekly | December 7, 2017 | 27