With a successful 2016 track season now behind Callum Scotson that saw the 20-year-old win a rainbow jersey in the team pursuit and an Olympic Games silver medal in the same event, his focus in 2017 is on racing and winning in Europe. Scotson successfully defended his U23 Australian national time trial to start his BMC Development career in the best manner possible kick off his biggest road season to date.
Scotson, who rode the London and Gent Six Days with Cameron Meyer, was slower than his 2016 winning time in the trial time but demonstrated his maturity 12-months on from his breakout win, delivering on his favourite status and winning the green and gold jersey by 59 seconds.
"I sort of block it out. It is more what other people say," Scotson said post-victory of starting the time trial as the overwhelming victory. "I wasn't thinking in that way and I judge how I am going of my training. I don't look at past performances, I knew I was feeling good coming in so regardless of whether you went good the year before or bad. Two years ago I was two minutes down and one minute last year so you don't judge things off how you go one year ago."
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In 2016, Scotson's brother Miles, who joined BMC from 2017, was the favourite but was unable to match the speed and pace of his younger brother. Callum Scotson acknowledged the possibility of a bolter upsetting the apple cart in Thursday's race while explaining that he was solely focused on his own race.
"If anything for me, it could be a hindrance but I decided not to let it bother me. I knew I was going well coming into it so I was using that as motivation and not going ‘I was national champion last year'. I know anyone can pop out and do an amazing ride and win it," he said. " Last year, my brother was a massive favourite and I pulled a really big one out on the day and beat him. That still didn't mean I was a better time trialist than him, I had a better day and the same thing could have happened to today."
Scotson's next outing will be in Saturday's 132km road race where he is aiming to match brother Miles (2015) and fellow South Australian Rohan Dennis (2012) in doing the time trial and road race double. After the championships, Scotson will make his Tour Down Under debut with the UniSA-Australia wild card team and will also race the Herald Sun Tour with the national team in early-February to begin his road season in earnest.
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