Dave Bedwell

Bedwell joined Buttle and the rest of the Hercules team when it went to Les Issambres, in south-west France, to prepare for the Tour de France of 1955. Hercules was Britain's largest professional team and it was certain that riders for the national team would be drawn from it. The team rode the early-season races along the Côte d'Azur that riders used for training. Bedwell finished second to Jacques Anquetil at Fréjus, just ahead of Jean Stablinski. The following day he outsprinted Anquetil for third place at Marseille. In the Tour, however, Bedwell left the race after three days, told he was outside the time limit when he wasn't but happy nevertheless to drop out. He said:

Buttle and Bedwell rode for Claud Butler, a London cycle company. But money was limited and Buttle arranged sponsorship from Hercules Cycles for them, Dennis Talbot and Clive Parker. The team expanded and in 1954 it won the Tour of Britain along with seven of its daily stages. Bedwell's most spectacular stage was the last. It lasted 127 miles from Bournemouth to Alexandra Palace in north London. If Bedwell won the stage, he would move from seventh to third, behind the Frenchman Eugène Tamburlini and the British rider, Brian Robinson. The race skirted London on the North Circular Road, the northern half of the city's ring road. Bob Maitland of the BSA team and Henri Guldemont of Belgium had a lead on the field of 400 metres. Bedwell reached them in the park of Alexandra Palace, sprinted past them and collapsed on the grass from his effort.

He became a full professional in 1952, moving back to the NCU so that he could ride a new series of pro races started at Herne Hill velodrome by a journalist, Johnny Dennis, of The Bicycle. Dennis's idea was that the experience would help British riders break through on the continent. They competed every other week, individually and in pairs. Bedwell's partner was another Londoner, Derek Buttle. There were more than 20 professional riders in Britain.

Bedwell won London-Battle-London and Dover-London in his first years. He was chosen by the BLRC in 1951 to ride the Grand Prix de l'Humanité in France. He won.

His Romford Wheelers clubmate, Jack Leeth, recalled: "Dave was demobbed from the RAF around 1948. He lived in the Bedwell family home in Carlton Road, Romford, a cycling household with its own fitness room. Dave already had a reputation as a great cyclist and was into healthy eating." Another local cyclist, Roger St Pierre, said: "They didn't come any tougher than this stocky man whose thighs seemed thicker than his legs were long. He effectively invented interval training for cyclists: sprinting between telephone poles, freewheeling to the next one, then sprinting again, the freewheeling stretches getting shorter and shorter. We could keep it up for, maybe, four or five sprints, but tough Dave could keep going at it for mile after mile. And yet, on other rides, Dave would plod along at such a slow pace that you'd think he would need stabilisers to stop from falling off for loss of momentum."

Dave Bedwell (28 August 1928, Romford, Essex, now the London Borough of Havering – 28 February 1999, Kingskerswell, Devon) was one of Great Britain's most accomplished racing cyclists in the 1950s, known as the "Iron Man" of cycling. He won four stages in the first Tour of Britain, rode for Britain in the world professional road championship in 1953 and 1956 and rode for Britain in the Tour de France.