Cameron Mason

Van Torrenhout had established a significant advantage, but Nies gradually closed the gap before passing him on the final ascent of the Koppenberg.

Gerben Kuipers finished third, 42 seconds behind, ahead of Pim Ronja and Britain's Cameron Mason, who completed that top five.

Lucinda Brand claimed a convincing victory in the women's race, finishing in 53 minutes, 29 seconds, 53 seconds ahead of Italy's Salah Casasola.

Marie Schreiber finished third at one minute, 22 seconds back, with Helene Clausel fourth and Amandine Foucanet fifth.

There is positives to take from it.

this is one of the races where it's nicer to ride from the back to the front than from the front to the back because if you stay within your own like power ability don't blow up it's quite easy to move forward here on some courses it's better to go hard in the beginning get with a group get that advantage and then try and stop the bleeding and hope you can maybe stop in an eighth place or something In this race you really want to kind of move forward if you have it because you saw with cameron mason Today he had for the first time this season a bad start which was unfortunate and he still fought his way back up to fifth place So that was quite impressive by him as well And on another course the damages might have been bigger if he had a start like that Let's go to the woman's race then we've spent enough time talking about all the men here A interesting first lap with Helene Clausel sending an absolute missile away.

She did this in a couple of races already this season, but today she kind of held on more and better than for the rest of the season.

But she was followed by the world champion Lucinda Brandt, the Luxembourg champion Mairi Schreiber and the Italian champion Sara Casasola.

So really, we were kind of interested in that.

So Cameron Mason recently made the news, made the viral pages.

He had a flappy helmet strap.

and the internet mocked the British cyclocross champion's loose strap.

Tier 4, we've been talking a bit too much about Tier 5.

We have Cameron Mason, Jente Michels who had some stomach issues.

So, you know, he drops it down.

But overall, I think still nothing to worry about for him as well.

Nielsen van der Putten was there, Victor van der Putten and Philippe Oorts were arguably there, but I'm not going to count them because they were so far off the back and so struggling that when they came back on the pace drop, they were gone.

Who were there? Kevin Kuhn and Cameron Mason.

So we went to three laps to go with those seven riders when Gerbert Kuypers attacked on the first climb.

The more famous one by the lake, he accelerated, opened a small gap.

Meuse kind of escaped that crash because just before he had taken a bike change.

Otherwise, I'm quite sure he would have been the one who responded to Kuipers because that's a little bit how the dynamic was.

And third place went to Niels van der Putten who held off Cameron Mason.

Kevin Koon had made a strong impression in the final lap but had problems with getting back in his pedal after the downhill u-turn where there was a dismount and as a result of that he fell back in fifth place.

So he has to confirm that, but for now he can stay there.

Tier four, we have Cameron Mason staying there, Reinkamp, Wietsemeuse and Korsjes.

I think with tier four, it's definitely the tier where you, at least where I have riders, where you can definitely say that they are uh you know in having good momentum but they didn't have that moment yet where i can really go off from from and and say you know you are deserving of a higher tier so i think all four to be honest having you know solid openings One's better than others.

I think definitely someone like Cameron Mason is on the move.

Corsus as well.

But all of them, to be honest, very deserving of the tier that they are at.

Let's discuss the men's race then, because that one also was close until the very end.

Somebody last week commented on our YouTube episode that we didn't give enough credit to the good start of Cameron Mason, and I wrote in a reply that that was definitely true, because last year Cameron Mason certainly improved his start and frequently had quite good starts early on in the season, or at least better than we were used to, but this year it looks like He's turned it up a whole nother notch because indeed last week he was second or third into the field but this weekend he took the hole shot in Meulebeke on the track and immediately took off.

He was quickly joined up front by Jente Michels and for a while these two riders took their turns.

Then later they were joined up front by a strong Joran Viseuren with Maaike van Toernout leading the chase further behind.

Van Toerenhout also made the jump and we had four leaders who kind of were content with the situation, just looked at each other.

Van de Putten came across, Wietsemeuse came across and a bit later a couple of other riders including Philippe Oortz also briefly hatched on but then kind of settled back in and were never really in contention.

Late in the race, we went to a situation with Jente Michels and Niels van der Putten for Alpecin in front, Michael van Toerenhout and Gerben Kuipers for Pauwelshuizen, Wietse Meusen, Johan Wiseuren for Creelan and Cameron Mason for 777.

Wiseuren was thrown out of contention with a mechanical issue.

It was actually between him and Václav Jézek, but I think that it was in the end Bazant that just with his win as well in Pilsen that deserved just that little bit more.

Tier 4, we go with Cameron Mason, Kamp, Ronald and Van de Putten.

More of the usual suspects, I guess, of this tier, I think.

Mason starting his season strong.

They wanted those muscles, probably the only thing that they were promised, 100 kilograms of that if they won.

Were to take the win if they didn't win maybe no dinner for them I I'm not too sure but they were definitely super eager before there was this statistic that despite all the crosses that met depending as organized one of his own riders had never managed to win that race and today that changed in the men's elite category because We saw early on hair and diapers take a flyer He put some pressure on Cameron Mason briefly took over but roughly around the halfway point of the race three riders broke away We had Jordi Corsus with Michael van Toerenhout and Joran Viseuren.

A bit later, Gerwin Kuipers came across as well.

They tried to play some trick-housery on Viseuren, but he managed to close that gap, pace slowed.

There were articles this week, oh, Laura Zweig is going to do very good because of stuff that he was showing at the Wednesday practices.

And he was nowhere today.

On the other hand, Cameron Mason wrote on his sub stack, which I highly recommend you subscribe to, in addition to ours, he is like, oh, I'm getting destroyed at these Wednesday practices, dropped from the training group.

And where was Mason today? He was ahead of many of these guys.

However, the rest of the group, led by Keelman, Billy, Basil and Cycles, were quick to shut them down.

A small group would still be together in the mid-part of the race, which included defending champion Cameron Mason, seven racing.

It was Keelman who would make his way clear with half of the final 24km laps remaining.

He then held off the chase from Mason to become Scottish champion, with Patrick Hughes, GTR, in third, The author of that article was unattributed.