With support from Pieterse, Casasola and more, Cameron Mason explains why he 'froze' again at World Championship

The always open and honest Brit didn’t disappear into the background afterwards. Instead, Mason posted a lengthy statement on his social media, reflecting on what went wrong and why pressure tends to hit him hardest when the biggest races come around. (External link as in original: https://www.instagram.com)

Mason, 25, hasn’t had a smooth winter, although he did show flashes of form at the end of November with several excellent results. When he became British champion in January, it briefly felt like a turning point — but in Benidorm he could only manage 35th. His last test came in Maasmechelen, where he finished tenth. So the question heading into Hulst was simple: would he be there when it mattered most? After a strong lap in Friday’s Team Relay, the answer seemed to be “yes”. But in Sunday’s elite race, nothing clicked. “In a normal job, I obviously wouldn’t write online about a bad day at the office for thousands of people to see. But in a normal job, thousands of people wouldn’t see that bad day either. That’s why I want to share this publicly,” Mason wrote.

Over recent winters, Mason has regularly shown he is one of the sport’s biggest talents — but, in his own view, that often happens without him taking the “obvious” route. “I often perform by accident, as a by-product of chasing something else, pursuing a different feeling or walking a different path. On paper, performing isn’t enough for me,” he explained.

Still, Mason also knows results are the currency in elite sport. “So when a big race like Worlds comes around, the main goal becomes to perform. And then I find it hard to do what’s expected of me. I think that’s because I spend so much energy trying to focus, that I forget I actually need to relax to get the best out of myself,” he said.

Mason says he wants to get back to “racing without expectations, assumptions and limitations.” (‘Racen zonder verwachtingen, aannames en beperkingen’.) He also doesn’t believe in the idea of “just a bad day.” “There always has to be a reason for days like that — and to know that, you have to know what a good day is. I know what those days feel like and I know how to train, recover, suffer, race, eat, sleep, and so on. But I don’t know how to do this every time, for every race, every day,” he wrote.

In the build-up to Worlds, Mason says he didn’t focus on those fundamentals, but instead got caught up in “the small unknown factors that I worried about. I don’t want to be the same and perform the same in every race,” he added, returning to his “normal job” comparison. “I’m privileged to experience highs — but also privileged to experience lows.”

“I have a short memory, so it’s easy to forget while I carry on. I’m learning you have to love the puzzle and the unknown factors. That’s what motivates me to keep going,” Mason concluded.