Tim March — The Superclass Champion Who Built His Own Frames

Legend Bike Co · BMX heritage series

In the summer of 1984 the International BMX Federation brought its European Championships to a hillside in Birmingham, England. The track ran downhill and it ran fast — the federation's own report clocked the average speed at around 42 kilometers an hour — and nine countries sent riders. The man who walked away with the two biggest classes was a rider from the south coast of England who had spent the previous winter in a workshop in Bournemouth cutting and brazing his own frames. Tim March won Superclass 20-inch and Super Trophy 20-inch at his home European Championships on a bike with his own name on the down tube. That combination, a rider at the top of his sport riding hardware he built himself, is rare anywhere in BMX. In Britain in 1984 it had not been done before.

Two names at the top of British BMX

The clearest statement of where Tim March stood in his own country comes from the International BMX Federation's own contemporaneous archive, kept by the federation's general secretary of the period. Writing about 1984, it names two English riders as holding a superstar standing in the sport at that moment: Andy Ruffell and Tim March. That is the frame to hold onto. British BMX in the mid-1980s was a genuine mass sport with television coverage, national sanctions, and full grandstands, and at the very top of it there were two household names. March was one of them.

He was also, in 1984, the one who won. The British BMX Hall of Fame's own account of the era is direct about it: in the first year of Superclass racing, it was March and not Ruffell who took the number one plate. Ruffell stayed ahead on fame — his name traveled outside BMX in a way March's never did, and it was Ruffell that Raleigh went out and bought in 1985 — but on the gate in 1984 the order was March first, Ruffell second.

The route he took to get there is only partly documented. By his own account he was racing by about 1980, when he first lined up against the Wigan racer Alan Woods. The earliest sponsorship the record gives him is Lee Cooper, the jeans manufacturer, credited as his primary backer for the 1983 season. Beyond that, nothing about the arrangement survives in the sources checked here. What the record does make clear is what happened next, and why.

The winter he started building

Britain in the early 1980s had a BMX boom but not much of a BMX industry. The bikes and the good parts came in from America and Japan, and if you wanted something that was not in the importers' catalogs, you waited or you went without. March's answer was to make the parts himself. The brand that became MRD started in Poole, Dorset, and its first product was a set of wide pro-size handlebars, made because nobody in the United Kingdom was selling them. Number plates and pads followed.

Frames came next. Three prototype frames were built in 1983 from Reynolds 531 tubing at the Birmingham Wheels Project, a West Midlands scheme that put unemployed young people to work building a motorsport complex and that ran a small bicycle factory and a race team of its own on the same ground. That is the same site, and the same track, where March would win the European Championship a year later — a small coincidence of geography that says a lot about how compact British BMX was at the time.

By 1 January 1984 he had a workshop in Bournemouth turning out complete 20-inch and 24-inch models in Reynolds 531, and by the summer he was racing one. The full product story belongs on the MRD chapter; what matters here is the sequence. He did not retire from racing and then become a manufacturer. He built the frames while he was still at his peak, and then he won on them.

1984 — the year everything landed

Kellogg's, and BMX on British television

From 14 to 24 May 1984 the Kellogg's BMX Championships ran in England: six days, four of them racing, cut into a series screened over six weeks. It was the first BMX series in the country made for television, it went out on Channel 4, and it was fronted by Mick Brown and by Andy Ruffell. A field of invited American professionals — Eric Rupe, Clint Miller, Nelson Chanady and Mike Miranda among them — raced for a purse of fifteen thousand pounds, while the British Superclass riders raced for three thousand. Tim March took the Superclass trophy. For a lot of British households that series was the first and only BMX they ever saw, which is why the win registers out of proportion to the prize money.

Birmingham, 21 and 22 July

The IBMXF European Championships came to the Birmingham Wheels track that July with England, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Germany, Belgium, France, Spain and Italy represented. It was 28 degrees. The federation's own write-up calls March the standout rider of the meeting and says he won convincingly. He took Superclass 20-inch ahead of Trevor Robinson, with Ludy van de Werff third. He took Super Trophy 20-inch ahead of Addie van de Ven, with Andy Ruffell third — the only place in the surviving results where Britain's two biggest names appear on the same sheet.

Suzuka, August

Three weeks later the third IBMXF World Championships ran at the Suzuka circuit in Japan, promoted locally and largely boycotted by the American industry, which had wanted control of the event and stayed home when it did not get it. Fifteen countries turned up anyway, with 589 entries. March raced and came away with a second place in Amateur Cruiser, a third in Amateur Trophy and a seventh in Amateur 20-inch. The federation ran adult competition under amateur classifications at the time, partly because it was pursuing Olympic recognition, so those results sit at the top level of that year's world championship rather than in a junior bracket.

A team, a partner, and a bus

Winning made the brand credible, and the brand made a team possible. Here March did something none of his rivals managed: he brought money into BMX from outside the sport rather than competing for the money already in it. In 1985 he persuaded the grocery chain VG into a joint team venture with March Racing Developments, and the result was one of the more memorable pieces of hardware in British BMX — a fully liveried VG and March double-decker bus that carried the team to races. The riders who benefited from that arrangement included Steve Bigland, Mark "Whoppa" Watkins, Anthony Howells and Ashley Davies. A works BMX team in a branded double-decker is exactly the kind of detail that gets remembered for forty years, and it was a rider-run operation, not a corporate one.

1986, and the injuries

March closed out his professional racing at the end of 1986, and he closed it out on a win — the NBMXA British Championships. The Pro class British Championship and the National Championships for 1986 are both credited to him. He was 25. The reason it ended there was physical: a series of back and shoulder injuries that his own brand's published history is blunt about. Racing stopped, and within a couple of years MRD wound down with it.

Off the bike, into print

He did not leave the sport. March went into cycling publishing, working for 4130 Publishing and later on The Albion, which put him on the other side of the magazines that had covered him. He also stayed close to British BMX's memory of itself: in May 2017 it was March who wrote the British BMX Hall of Fame's introduction to Mirage founder Alan Woods, the Wigan racer and shop owner he had first raced against around 1980. It is a warm piece, and it is also one of the better primary accounts of how the northern English BMX scene got built.

The long silence, and coming back

Then, on the manufacturing side, nothing for about thirty years. The brand went into what MRD itself calls a manufacturing hibernation. In 2023 he brought it back with a limited run of frames and forks in Reynolds 853, and put them under two riders: Tony Pitman, who had raced for MRD in 1984 and 1985 and never stopped riding one, and Elsa Rendall-Todd, who took second at the National BMX series, fourth at the European Championship and second at the World Championship in the 16-year-old female category that season. A man who won on his own frames in 1984 handed a 2023 world championship silver medal to a rider born four decades after his own best year. That is an unusual shape for a BMX career, and it is documented.

Timeline

• c. 1961 Born, inferred from his stated age of 25 when he retired at the end of 1986. Not directly documented.
• c. 1980 Racing, and first lining up against the Wigan racer Alan Woods.
• 1981 The business that becomes MRD starts in Poole, Dorset, making wide pro-size handlebars for a British market that could not buy them.
• 1983 Races under sponsorship from Lee Cooper, the jeans manufacturer. Three prototype MRD frames are built in Reynolds 531 at the Birmingham Wheels Project.
• 1 Jan 1984 March Racing Developments begins producing complete frames from a Bournemouth workshop.
• May 1984 Wins the Superclass trophy at the Kellogg's BMX Championships, Britain's first BMX series made for television.
• Jul 1984 Wins Superclass 20-inch and Super Trophy 20-inch at the IBMXF European Championships, Birmingham.
• Aug 1984 Second in Amateur Cruiser, third in Amateur Trophy and seventh in Amateur 20-inch at the IBMXF World Championships, Suzuka, Japan.
• 1984 Takes Britain's number one plate in the first year of Superclass racing, ahead of Andy Ruffell.
• 1985 Brings the grocery chain VG in as a team partner; the MRD team travels in a liveried VG and March double-decker bus.
• 1986 Wins the NBMXA British Championships and retires from professional racing at 25, after a run of back and shoulder injuries.
• Late 1980s MRD winds down. Roughly three decades of dormancy follow.
• After racing Works in cycling publishing, at 4130 Publishing and later on The Albion.
• May 2017 Writes the British BMX Hall of Fame's introduction to Alan Woods.
• 2023 Relaunches MRD with a limited run of Reynolds 853 frames and forks, raced by Tony Pitman and Elsa Rendall-Todd.

Sources

Reynolds Technology, "The Story of Reynolds & BMX: MRD," reynoldstechnology.biz, published 28 October 2024 — the 1982 founding date, the 1983 Reynolds 531 prototypes at the Birmingham Wheels Project, the 1984-85 production run, the VG team partnership, the 1984 European and UK titles, the 1984 Kellogg's Superclass trophy, the 1986 British Pro and National titles, the back and shoulder injuries and retirement at 25, and the 2023 relaunch with Tony Pitman and Elsa Rendall-Todd. universityofbmx.com, "History of BMX — 1984," the archived year-by-year record kept by the International BMX Federation's general secretary of the period — the Lee Cooper sponsorship for 1983, the 1 January 1984 founding of March Racing Developments and the Bournemouth workshop, the frame specification and pricing, the 21-22 July 1984 European Championships at Birmingham including full Superclass and Super Trophy results, the description of the Birmingham Wheels Project, the 14-24 May 1984 Kellogg's BMX Championships and its invited American field and prize money, and the 16-19 August 1984 IBMXF World Championships at Suzuka with the amateur class results. British BMX Hall of Fame, "The Rise of 1980's UK BMX Teams" by Chris Carter, britishbmxhalloffame.com — March taking the number one plate ahead of Andy Ruffell in the first year of Superclass racing in 1984, Lee Cooper identified as a jeans manufacturer and as his 1983 primary sponsor, his ability to draw sponsors from outside the sport into BMX, the VG joint venture and the liveried double-decker bus, and the MRD team riders Steve Bigland, Mark "Whoppa" Watkins, Anthony Howells and Ashley Davies. British BMX Hall of Fame, "Alan Woods Intro by Tim March," published 22 May 2017 and written by March himself — his first racing against Alan Woods around 1980, and his own statement that he worked for 4130 Publishing and later on The Albion. mrdbmx.com — MRD's own published history: the 1981 Poole, Dorset origin, the handlebars-first product sequence, the 1984 product range, and the retirement from professional racing at the end of 1986 after the NBMXA British Championships. bmxmuseum.com reference listings for the 1984 MRD Expert and 1985 MRD Badlander were visible in search results but the site blocks automated access, so they are named rather than cited. bmxsociety.com was unreachable throughout this research.

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