'You want to get a bit of a kicking to show your level': Britain's dominant cyclo-cross star on his season, World Cups, and what's next

You have to go back well over two years, all the way to 14 October, 2023, before you alight upon a National Trophy cyclo-cross race that Thomas Mein did not win. They don't, after all, call him the Mein Machine for nothing.

Alongside the British National Championships (which he has also won) the 'Trophys' are the UK's biggest cyclo-cross races, complete with UCI accreditation (mostly – more on that later). Over the past three seasons Mein, the 26-year-old from Gateshead in the UK's North-East, has made the series his. This year has been his most dominant yet, winning five out of five races to date and claiming a third consecutive overall victory even before the final round has been raced.

"The Trophy has gone well obviously, winning the five," Mein tells Cycling Weekly from his Belgian base near Antwerp. However, he is more preoccupied by his results in the biggest races on the continent, which haven't been quite what he'd hoped for.

"In terms of European stuff, I've not been where I wanted to be," he says. "I don't know the exact reason, but it's one of those things. The level is very high in Europe at the minute."

He began his season with a string of victories that spanned his Hope team's own Supacross series and the National Trophy series, before heading to Europe to take part in the UCI Cyclo-cross World Cup. He's now raced four rounds, with 20th at Flammanville, France his best placing so far – not quite the top-10s that he achieved last year and which he's still hoping for before the season is out.

"It's not been the best start, but there's still lots of time to end on a high," he said.

"It's a long season still. The World Cups have only just started, there's plenty of big racing to come for us, so hopefully it kind of turns around."

Despite his impressive National Trophy win list, Mein has not quite had everything his own way in the UK this season either. He began his season with the super-compact four-round Hope Supacross league, which saw him losing out to some useful Belgian competition in the first two rounds.

"There were two under-23s from Pauwels-Sauzen, and that was good," he told CW. "You don't want to be racing easy races. At the start of the season you want to get a bit of a kicking and sort of show where your level is, and it helps you improve from there. Otherwise you're just coasting, thinking you're going well and you're not.

He added: "It was pretty quiet in Belgium up until around the end of October, so it was the younger ones coming over, and they obviously need points as well," explains Mein. "So it's a chance to do four races in essentially one week. Yeah, it was good to have them there. And it obviously promotes the league a bit more, having some foreign riders. You don't see many, very often in the UK anymore."

Mein was missing some of the biggest British competition this year in the form of Cameron Mason (only racing on the continent) and Tom Pidcock (who isn't racing cross at all this season). And while you get the impression he'd relish the competition, Mein says: "Their sponsors aren't really bothered about racing outside of Belgium or the World Cup... So there's not really any need to come back and race a Trophy [event]."

There is one final race left in the National Trophy series this season, taking place on January 2-3 at Irvine Beach, Ayrshire. Unlike the rest of the series, it will not be UCI accredited.

Cyclo-cross is where Mein's heart lies, but he is a regular mountain bike racer in the summer, and more recently has been seen on the start line of gravel races like The Gralloch, and Gravel One Fifty in the Netherlands – both part of the UCI Gravel World Series.

It's a discipline with a great future, reckons Mein, who has seen first hand the differences in participation levels compared to CX.

"The participation is pretty high," he says. "Every one I've done has been pretty much over 500 riders, I think, across the all the categories, which is pretty impressive. The road, at an amateur level, and cross as well, I think are only going down in numbers, and gravel seems to be taking off. I think it's got a good future ahead."

When it comes to the mountain biking, these days Mein concedes he isn't quite as fearless as he once was, especially with cross-country courses seemingly becoming ever more technically demanding.

"As a kid I was a bit more fearless, I think. But I do sort of go down some things just thinking, like, I don't need to be doing this in the summer, crashing out in rock gardens and jumps and stuff," he says. "I've never tried to do a mountain bike World Cup race. It's definitely beyond my level at this time my life. At that level the descending's just nuts… I'm quite happy just plugging down them and then pressing on on the climbs and the flat bits."

The gravel and mountain biking makes up Mein's summer endurance racing, but there is still the small matter of the rest of the cyclo-cross season to get through first. There are a number of World Cup races still to be run, and the World Championships too, although he says: "Obviously that is based off selection and at the minute it's not not looking that good for it. But there's still obviously plenty of time, fingers crossed, a few weeks to turn things around."

Right now, while the rest of us are wrapping presents and checking we have enough mince pies available, Mein is about to embark on the biggest, busiest spell of the cross season. He raced Koksijde round of the UCI World Cup at the weekend, where he had to DNF, and will race again today (Tuesday December 23) before returning to the World Cup at Zolder on Boxing Day. Then there is more racing on the December 29 and 30, and finally another World Cup at Zonhoven on January 4.

After that he returns to the UK where, hopefully, someone will have saved him a mince pie.