After a whirlwind year in which she announced herself as British cycling’s next biggest star, there are times Emma Finucane still has to pinch herself.
It has been a roller-coaster 12 months for the Welshwoman, who wrote her name into the record books by picking up three medals at the Paris Olympics. Not since Mary Rand in 1964 had a British female Olympian scooped three individual medals at a single Games as Finucane helped power Britain to team sprint gold and won bronze in the individual keirin and sprint.
It capped a remarkable rise for the Carmarthen cyclist, who earned European, world and Olympic titles while just 21. “I call them my Oscars – nobody can take them away from me,” beams Finucane, whose upward trajectory continued after the Games when she defended her world sprint title. “It’s all happened really quickly.”
Finucane, who has made no secret of the fact that she wants to target a hat-trick of golds at the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028, is already plotting the sequel to her fledgling career. Goal-setting, of course, is in the DNA of every athlete. Keely Hodgkinson, the British Olympic champion, has set her sights on ‘Project 1:53’ to break the 41-year-old record in the women’s 800 metres. Yet Finucane, who turned 22 just before Christmas, employs a more relaxed approach when it comes to chasing the next big high.
She has already learnt a thing or two about the ebbs and flows of high-performance sport, having struggled to motivate herself for the Track Cycling World Championships in Denmark two months after the Olympics. “That period was really hard for me,” reflects Finucane. “After the Games, I was emotionally drained. I had nothing left, which wasn’t surprising because it was the pinnacle of my year and I gave everything. The girls were like, ‘Let’s do the worlds!’ And I was like ‘What? Why?’ I wanted to retain my title but I’d done everything I wanted to do. It’s really hard to go into battle but you’ve already won the war.”
Finucane did successfully defend the individual sprint title she won in Glasgow last year, while she and her team sprint colleagues also added a world crown to their Olympic one, claiming Britain’s first gold in the event since 2008. “It was just about changing the narrative. I’m so glad I went,” says Finucane, who considers herself fortunate that she has entered the sport in an era where women are no longer being treated as small men. Dame Laura Kenny recently revealed on the Telegraph Women’s Sport Podcast that she struggled with “horrific” saddle sores after years of wearing skin-suits designed for men fitted with a ‘one size fits all’ chamois, before British Cycling began exploring female-friendly alternatives. Meanwhile, Hannah Dines, the former Paralympic British cyclist, required surgery after her saddle caused swelling to her vulva.
“I’m grateful that I haven’t had to learn the hard way,” says Finucane. “I’ve come into a programme which is pretty much fully developed. Laura tried to get different chamois suits for the women and I’ve just stepped into having a different chamois to the men. I kind of wish I was part of it, but also I’m really grateful to have those role models who clearly know what they’re talking about and who have done the work for the next generation. Maybe I can do things for the next generation after me.”
Finucane is already conscious of being a role model for the next crop of female track cyclists. Aged 16, she made the decision to swap the windy travails around the Black Mountains near her home in Carmarthen for the boards of the velodrome. Not only did it mean bi-weekly three-hour round trips in the family car to Newport’s indoor velodrome, but moulding her body to meet the demands of a power-based sport and confronting her own body-image fears.
“I was getting bigger in ways I didn’t want to,” says Finucane. “I was like: ‘I hate this.’ You get your periods and your body changes. You obviously need bigger legs to produce more power, but I didn’t want to hit a certain weight. I remember looking at sprinters and not being sure if I wanted bigger legs or to look a bit different.
“But then I accepted that I needed to produce more power to be fast. I needed to push my weights, push my body, eat more protein and gain muscle to be the best in the world, and it’s something I really had to learn and accept. We get skin folds quite a lot and that was really daunting, because they were testing how much fat I have. But that’s high performance, it’s part of it. It’s to help you at the end of the day.”
She is unsure whether that period of her life would be doubly difficult in today’s world. “You have TikTok now and all the girls on there look different [to me],” she says. “But I think it’s who you surround yourself with, who you speak to. Sometimes it’s hard when you look on the outside, but I do things that normal people wouldn’t do. It’s just perspective.
“I had role models like Victoria Pendleton but nowadays athletes have their platforms. Emily Campbell [the British weightlifter] has spoken a lot about body image and it’s incredible. Teenagers want to fit in. I was like that. I didn’t want to look different and have bigger legs because I was embarrassed. But now I use my legs for what I do on the track. Every girl looks different as an athlete. Having those female role models nowadays is incredible and I just want it to keep going.”
Last month, she returned to the Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines Velodrome in Paris for the UCI Track Champions League alongside her boyfriend, Matt Richardson, who caused a stir after the Olympics when he switched allegiance from Australia to Britain. Finucane, who was let in on the secret long before the Games, insists he has added a fresh dynamic to her training. “He’s been a massive inspiration for me,” says Finucane. “His work ethic is insane. How he approaches the sport is really refreshing for me – not that I don’t love it anyway – it’s just seeing a different side to things.”
Would she ever consider a pivot back to road racing? “No, I want to commit to track sprinting,” she says. “I love road. It’s taken a long time for that to come in women’s road cycling, whereas in track cycling it’s pretty equal as men and women. Road is still coming on and I’m excited to see it progress.”
Now the couple are enjoying a two-month holiday in Australia, with both determined to decompress at the start of another Olympic cycle. “I’m definitely not bringing my bike,” joked Finucane. After her medal-laden year, you can hardly blame Britain’s new track cycling queen.
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