Cameron's
Story

Cameron Mason is someone who just loves riding his bike. Any bike and all bikes – whether it’s a long road ride with friends or messing about pulling wheelies and doing bunny hops, Cameron is in his element riding his bike.

Cameron isn’t from a cycling family so to speak, but his family have certainly embraced cycling and all the joys it brings. So how did he first get into cycling? That was like so many people, by going along to his local club and giving it a try.

Clubs are the perfect entry point into cycling, so if you know how to ride a bike then use our ACTIVITY FINDER to see where your local club is, and then go along and give it a try for yourself.

That’s exactly what Cameron did, as he explains:

Just five minutes from his front door, West Lothian Clarion was the start of Cameron’s cycling career, and he has gone from nervous beginner to a world class rider. West Lothian Clarion is a great example of a traditional cycling club – without a purpose-built facility they would train on the grass playing fields in Linlithgow, or on a closed off car park – this demonstrates that as long as you have a bike you can get involved in cycling. And in some instances, you don’t even need a bike, as some of our clubs and community groups have a bike library that you can borrow from.

West Lothian Clarion has gone from strength to strength since Cameron first rode with them, as one of the founding members, and they now boast their very own closed road circuit, the West Lothian Cycle Circuit, which is the perfect training venue for beginners, right through to world class riders, which Cameron has become. Opened in 2023 as a result of the Cycling Facilities Fund, one of the many legacy programmes of the 2023 UCI Cycling World Championships, it’s a facility everyone should have a ride on!

Right from his early days as an U10 rider, Cameron gave events and races a go. In fact he gave everything a go – road, cyclocross, mountain bike – he just enjoyed riding his bike. And despite now being a GB international, he wasn’t always winning. In fact like so many children, Cameron was slow to develop and was often smaller than his others in his age group, but he got stuck in and had fun!

Cycling brought to much to Cameron’s life as a child – from best friends to getting to travel to beautiful places across Scotland and camping with his family, a bike race just part of a weekend away.

Still to this day Cameron races cyclocross, mountain bike and road, and he’s pretty clear in wanting people to give cycling a try, given how life changing it has been for him.

“As an elite racer you want people to be coming up and following in your footsteps! The stronger the base of cyclists is, the higher the peak will be, with more Scottish riders reaching a world class level.

“I want to see people in the same position as me, being given these amazing opportunities and being shown these new opportunities, whether that be racing, joining their local club or just riding their bikes. The more that happens the more Scottish Cycling gets noticed and the bigger and better things will be.”

And helping to get both Scottish Cycling and himself noticed, Cameron also runs his own YouTube channel documenting the highs and lows of his cycling journey, so if you need any further encouragement or inspiration to get involved in cycling, check it out here.