REMEMBERING THE TALENTED MARK BELL

NO discussion about Merseyside – that one time hotbed of UK racing talent - would ever be complete without a mention of the late Mark Bell, photographed here by Phil O'Connor.

 The Olympian’s flashes of brilliance during the 1980s saw him win national road race titles as an amateur and as a professional. Sadly, tragically, Bell died 10 years ago, in January 2009, at the age of 48.

 The Kirkby CC and Mercury RC dominated Merseyside racing some 40 - 50 years ago, boasting that either one of them could field a full team to ride for GB internationally.

Merseyside produced riders with fierce reputations. Men like Doug Dailey, John Clewarth, Dave Lloyd, Dave Rollinson, Pete Matthews,  Ken Hill and the most talented by far, Joey McLoughlin, the most successful of them all, and of course Bell. He was never in the Kirkby or Merc, and neither were a host of other talented riders from other clubs who would give as good as they got.

Bell started cycling with the Birkenhead Victoria, moved to the Birkenhead North End CC, then to Prescot Eagle, Port Sunlight Wheelers and then on to Manchester Wheelers, a club which would rival the two top Liverpool clubs for the breadth of talented riders they could field.

Other good Merseyside amateurs of that era included several from the Liverpool Century whose coach was Geoff  Bewley. Two of these riders, Lloyd and Kevin Apter migrated to the big two – Lloyd to Kirkby and Apter who rode for both the Kirkby and Mercury. Then there were those who stayed, John Spencer, who won the Merseyside Division title, among other top races, Callum Gough and Dave Grindley.

Grindley went on to race in Belgium.

There were top women riders, too, such as time triallists Joan Kershaw and Pauline Strong. And from the Isle of Man (IOM) –  though part of the Merseyside Region the Isle of Man has always had its own distinct development programme– there was Marie Purvis, Queen of road racing during her time, plus a regular stream of top roadmen in the New Millennium.

They are of course the Tour de France sprint king Mark Cavendish and 2015 national road champion Paul Kennaugh, plus Birkenhead’s Steve Cummings.

But in the 1980s, another hugely talented Merseysider was making the news, Mark Bell, from Bebington, a stone’s throw from Birkenhead.

He had made an impression when he was still only 12 years old!

He had a good sprint, and earned his first international selection when still a schoolboy. In 1979 he gained his first senior international selection, for the Sealink International. Two years later he won the British amateur road race title at Colchester. He won two stages of the Milk Race. He turned heads abroad when he became the first foreigner to win the 8-day Etoile de Sud in Belgium.

Bell’s top British victories included the Archer GP International in Buckinghamshire, the Tour of Essex (ESSEX GP) in 1984 he won selection for the Los Angeles Olympic road race, but that was something he preferred to forget. Selected for his sprinting ability, too late it was discovered it was a seriously hilly and not suited to Bell at all.

You might as well have entered a Derby winner in the Grand National.

That episode left him bitter and afterwards he promptly turned pro, which he had delayed doing to race the Olympics.

As a pro Bell rode first for Falcon and then Raleigh. This was in 1980s, when Britain boasted an impressive home based pro class. Bell joined riders of the calibre of Yorkshire’s super sprinter Sid Barras and Keith Lambert, Stafford’s Phil Bayton,   Midlands stars Les West and Hugh Porter, and Colin Lewis who hailed from Wales but lived in Devon.

Despite the home pro calendar lacking a decent programme of long distance races, any Continental pro racing in Britain would be in for a hard time taking these guys on in criteriums, the staple diet the British pro class at the time.

In his first year with the pros Bell won the Delyn GP. But his greatest moment came in 1986 riding for Raleigh, when he won the British pro road title in Newport, Shropshire.

I recall saying at the time that if there was a best-dressed award Bell would win it. He was always clean cut and neat with bronzed limbs the product of his annual racing trip to New Zealand.

Bell delighted the Kiwis when in 1981, having just won the national road title; he went to New Zealand with mentor Phil Griffiths, the multi TT champion and a top roadman himself.  The New Zealanders said they’d seen nothing as fast as Bell since world pro sprint champion Reg Harris, in 1954.

Despite his flamboyant style, Bell wasn’t exactly chatty. He was reserved, serious, a bit broody, until you got to know him.

You had to persevere to dig out information.  Then suddenly he’d open  up with a line which told you everything, rattling out a colourful statement laced in Scouse black humour and always with a sting in the tale which would leave you laughing.

Then you might get a flicker of a smile before he resumed that deadpan expression.

If something had annoyed him and you got the flak, he invariably sought you out later to apologise. Sorry about that, he’d say.

I recall visiting him at his home on the Wirral, interviewing him for Cycling Weekly. We needed a photo and Bell decided we needed a prop. So he wheeled his racing bike out of the shed. It was in sparkling condition except for one thing. It was missing the chain!

What the hell, said Bell. Who needs a chain?

And he posed with the dismembered machine, trying to keep a straight face, one hand on the saddle the other on the handlebars.

Sadly, there was a dark side to the remarkable story of Mark Bell, who admitted being too fond of the beer.

And he eventually succumbed to alcoholism. Though he recovered, and had got back on his bike he had other serious health issues which knocked him back over the ensuing years. On one occasion he phoned me up for a chat. He told me he’d enjoyed his cycling so much he wanted to write about it and wondered if any publisher would be interested.   He wrote me a letter once, as well.

There was not a trace of self-pity in these exchanges, and his one-liners where as sharp as ever. He’d tell me how he was getting on, what he hoped for.  He longed to be well enough to get back into  cycling,  not racing, just to potter out in the lanes, perhaps to the Eureka café, a must stop for local  bikies heading for North Wales or direction Shropshire.

It came as a shock when he collapsed and died in January 2009, aged 48.

His older brother, Tony, also a racing man, said. “Mark needed an operation – it was coming up. He hoped it help him get out walking, help him to do a bit of more cycling. He had a new bike, and had been enjoying riding again.”

It was never to be.

Sheffield’s Malcolm Elliott, Milk Race winner, Tour de France rider, stage winner and green jersey victor in the Tour of Spain, had been quite close to Bell.

“On his day, Mark could do what he wanted,” Elliot told me. “We rode a couple of Milk Races together. Mark was a year or so older than me. I can recall he looked far and away better than the others. He just looked right on the bike, powerful, well-tanned. And the image – on his face there was never a hint of effort.”