For the first time in his career, Cameron Mason will begin the UCI Cyclo-cross World Cup campaign as one of the favourites to take the opening race win. The 12-round series begins on Sunday in Tábor, Czechia, and the Scotsman will start on the back of a streak of form that has earned him two second-place finishes in a season in which he has regularly fought for the podium.
Though the Koppenbergcross at the start of the month was the first of those second places, last weekend was the best yet for the Seven Racing rider. On Saturday in the Telenet Suprprestige in Merksplas, the 25-year-old battled to a determined fifth place, later admitting to slightly overdoing it off the front early in the race.
“We just couldn’t get rid of each other,” Mason told Cyclingnews after a snowy mid-week ride in the Scottish hills. “If we could, we would have, and there’s a reason why it was so close; it’s just small margins in that last lap. You really have to know how to win as well as know how to ride the fastest.
“I haven’t won at that level, and up until now, it didn’t really matter, because I hadn’t actually been close in my head. A couple of years ago, in the Superprestige in Boom, I got second. I was 30 seconds back the whole race, and nothing changed. That was just a very honest second place. I didn’t go home thinking it was a big opportunity, whereas now after after Koppenberg and then Hamme, I definitely could have done things differently, and that maybe would have been the difference.
“I rode the first two, three laps of Hamme, thinking, ‘I’ll just be the front soon, it doesn’t matter.’ Whereas Merksplas was like, ‘I wonder if I’ll see the front,’ and then when I did, now what? I wasn’t really planning to be in the front. So, I think that was the progression; if there’d been a Monday race, I would have known I’m definitely strong enough to win. That’s the confidence steps that I took in just those couple of days.”
Koppenberg was Mason’s first battle with Nys, and while the result there was the same as in Hamme, Mason believes this season has been his best to date.
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