'For me, diamonds are not made under pressure' – British national champion disappointed with 21st at Cyclo-cross World Championships

Cameron Mason finished 21st at the UCI Cyclo-cross World Championships last Sunday in a disappointing race for the four-time British champion.

"I tend to perform by accident, as a byproduct of shooting for something else, chasing a different feeling or going down another path," Mason wrote in an Instagram post this week after the race in Hulst, the Netherlands on Sunday. "A result on paper doesn't do it for me most of the time. But it is the thing that matters in professional sport."

Mathieu van der Poel (Netherlands) won ahead of compatriot Tibor Del Grosso and Belgian Thibay Nys.

While a podium was a goal of Mason's, the Scot has previously told Cycling Weekly that reaching his potential provided a more tantalising goal than winning: "I know how good I can be," he said.

But Mason admitted struggling with the balance needed between ambition, stress and focus at high-pressure events like the World Championships on Instagram.

"I think it's because I spend so much energy trying to switch on, that I forget that I in fact need to be switched off to get the best from myself," he said. "Racing without assumptions, expectations and limits. As I do when I go for an average bike ride around Mid Lothian in June.

"For me diamonds are not made under pressure but found in the long grass off the beaten track."

The unpredictability of elite-level racing, and the accompanying scrutiny placed on professional cyclists is something Mason is acutely aware of.

"In a normal job I of course wouldn't be writing about my bad day at the office online to thousands of people," he wrote. "But in a normal job I also wouldn't have those bad days in front of thousands of people watching."

Mason has recently focused his training more heavily towards off-road, with a greater dependence on gym and strength training to cope with the bursts of energy needed to tackle a cross course.

"I know how to train, recover, suffer, race, eat, sleep etc, and I know how to perform," he continued. "But I don't know how to do this all the time, at every race, on all the big days. Even though I know a lot about the things that make me perform, it’s in the small amount of unknowns that I have spent weeks looking into, analysing and worrying about."

Mason has reassured his fans that his memory is short, and that success and knock-backs are all part of the sport. "I'm learning that you have to love the puzzles and unknowns in between all the fun bits," he added. "That is what makes me hungry to turn up and keep trying."