Cameron Mason: "There will be opportunities for me to ride with the Alpecin devo team"

British Cyclocross champion Cameron Mason recently shared his experiences and future goals in the sport during the inaugural episode of the "Cross is Boss" podcast.

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Was it always your dream to become a cyclocross rider?

Cameron Mason: "My dream was to become a bike rider and whatever discipline that was going to be in didn’t matter. Cyclocross has happened to turn into my main discipline, the one where I perform the best and the one that I end up enjoying the most, which is somewhat result driven."

How do you look back on your time at Trinity Racing?

"Really good. When you look back at the rider I was when I first joined Trinity Racing, I was a completely different rider to what I am now. I had so much to learn, but the environment the team created was amazing with professionals within all aspects of the team from mechanics to riders.

There couldn’t have been a better environment for an English-speaking person to go full gas into Cyclocross. Another great thing about Trinity Racing was that there was never any pressure as soon as you turned over U23 to make the next step instantly."

What were the major lessons you learned at Trinity?

"The lessons of how to be a bike rider. How to operate day to day, all the protocols and other simple things. Being a bike rider is simple but there’s lots of small things you have to do really well to be a top rider."

"I was learning directly from the best like living with Tom Pidcock, seeing that nothing he was doing was out of this world. He was good at controlling what he can control and when it came to the races, his skill, talent and experience shone through. Seeing all the hard work first hand, the fact that there are no easy ways to the top. All the top guys are trying to the best of their ability."

What convinced you to join the Cyclocross reds?

"The Cyclocross reds are one of the top teams in Cyclocross. They have a lot of experience just being a women’s team over the past few years. A big factor for me was the multi-discipline option as it is really important and that will be more connected to the Alpecin side of things. There will be opportunities for me to ride with their development team who have a really nice broad program with a variety of options, beneath their World Tour team.

"There will be road opportunities to ride with the Alpecin-Deceuninck devo team"

With a more road training approach joining a team like Cyclocross Reds, that will enable me to bulk out that base fitness that will help in both road and gravel hoping that it doesn’t have an impact on my Cyclocross. I like to have a really strong summer and road and gravel seeing how those effects a full Cyclocross season."

How do you feel about the technical aspects of Cyclocross?

"It’s nice to talk about power and weight but 50% of the skills could be attributed to how you apply power and how you handle corners. It is simply crazy how much time you can make within the corners and for me that is where I’m making a lot of time. I believe that I do have an ability at high torque, well suited to cross whereas not suiting road but it depends on the climb."

How have you felt about your road cycling?

"The issues I’ve had with road in the past, I just wasn’t well trained enough for it, I wasn’t fit enough to deal with the number of kilojoules.

I had the peak, but I couldn’t reach that peak in the final hour. However, I do think I have the ability to manage those kilojoules as I’ve ridden more gravel it has helped to manage them and measure my power."

Are the 2024 Olympics on your mind?

"Not really, just because I don’t have enough points and there is better British mountainbikers than me at this moment in time and Team GB only has 2 allocations which will most likely go to Tom Pidcock and Charlie Aldridge. It just makes sense for me to go into this road and gravel direction with the opportunities and physical attributes I have."

We look forward to seeing Cameron continue to grow and evolve as an athlete and fulfil the immense potential he possess to succeed in all forms of cycling he participates in.

Listen to the entire interview with Cameron Mason below!