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Bryan Andrew Marshall was the most polished rider of his time, Having been champion NH jockey with 66 winners in the season of 1947-48, he went on to win the Grand National on Early Mist in 1953 and again in 1954 on Royal Tan.Marshall, the son of an international show jumper, was born in Cloughjordan, Tipperary, on February 29, 1916, and was apprenticed to Atty Persse at Stockbridge in Hampshire.
He had already ridden his first winner on the flat (Cheviotdale, 10 May, 1929, Kempton at the age of 13) when joining Hubert Hartigan in 1929 and staying there for five years.
Then he moved to Penrith where Noel Murless was assistant trainer.
Murless, opening his own stable in Hambleton, Yorkshire, took the budding young jockey with him. Murless’s first jumping winner was Intelligent Outlook, December 1935, in a Carlisle hurdle race worth £70. Marshall not only rode the winner; he had also schooled it and driven the horsebox to the course.
In January, 1940, Marshall joined the cavalry and was commissioned into the 5th Inniskilling Dragon Guards the following year. He was demobilised in 1946 with the rank of Captain.
His first notable success upon his return to racing came on Fulke Walwyn’s Leap Man in Cheltenham’s Cathcart Challenge Cup, March 1946. Walwyn immediately offered Marshall a retainer and, as stable jockey, Marshall won for his new governor Kempton’s King George chase on Rowland Roy in 1947.
In September 1948, he rode the first five winners at a Folkestone meeting. They were all owned by the eccentric Dorothy Paget, who expressed her displeasure when he was beaten into second place on her sixth runner in the last race.
Paget was Walwyn’s most important owner and, unfortunately, it was on her horse, Lanveoc Poulmic, that Marshall rode one of his very few bad races. At Sandown in November 1961, the horse – heavily backed by Paget – was well clear and Marshall eased the horse down and was caught on the post. He never rode for her again.
Marshall had better luck with another owner, the Queen Mother. In December 1951 he won on her horse Manicou at Sandown and followed up this success on the same horse in Kempton’s King George Chase. Marshall was the rider of Devon Loch in his early races - later, Devon Loch was to collapse on the Aintree run-in with the National at its mercy.
Marshall reluctantly retired from riding at the end of the 1953-54 season on account of the many injuries suffered through falls. He trained for a short time at Berkeley House in Upper Lambourn, but enjoyed limited success only and, in June, 1973, closed the stable to run a horse transport business in Newbury.
Bryan Marshall died in Reading on October 9, 1991. He was 75.
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