It is just as well Emma Finucane is so good at sprinting. Britain’s rising star of track cycling has to lug an extra being around the velodrome with her. “His name’s Harold and he’s a part of me,” Finucane says, laughing, as she rolls up her trouser leg to show me a sizeable growth just beneath her left kneecap. “He will be going soon, though. After Paris. I’m having surgery to get him removed.”
Whether Finucane and Harold can end their relationship on a high will be one of the big stories of the final week of these Games. To say there are high hopes for the young Welsh rider would be understating things.
No less a figure than Dame Laura Kenny has backed Finucane to win “multiple medals” in Paris, beginning on Monday in the women’s team sprint, the first medal on offer in the velodrome. And then in the keirin on Thursday and individual sprint on the final day of the Games on Sunday. “I keep saying it and then I keep thinking ‘don’t say it because you just put pressure on her’,” Kenny said again this week. “But honestly she could be the first female to win three gold medals at a single Olympics, and she’s only 21.”
Fortunately, Finucane seems the sort to be able to cope with this insane level of expectation, which has only increased since the wretched injury suffered by Katie Archibald a few weeks ago. In the absence of the Scot, it is to Finucane that the British Track Cycling team will look for inspiration at these Games.
She knows it and she is determined not to let it affect her.
Bubbly, good-natured, it is not that Finucane does not suffer from pressure. She does. Finucane (pronounced ‘Fi-NOO-kuhn’), who grew up on an army base in the Welsh town of Carmarthen, famously went for a little cry in the toilets of Glasgow Velodrome before becoming sprint world champion last summer at the age of just 20. It is just that she seems to be learning better and better how to deal with it.
“It has been a huge thing, learning how to manage racing as world champion,” she says. “I went through so many emotions. I’ve done a lot of work with the GB psychs. I’ve built coping strategies. Like speaking to people, or watching YouTube videos, listening to music, going for walks. The Euros [the European Track Cycling Championships in January] was a really proud moment for me, because I won with the pressure.
“Now it’s the pressure of people saying I’m going to win three golds. And it’s hard. You want to try and use it to be really confident. But I’m not really that type of person to just walk around and be like that [Finucane mimes swaggering].
“I guess I’ll just try to own it,” she says. “The emotions might come out. Like in Glasgow when I had to go to the toilet. I might experience that again. But I know that feeling now. It doesn’t have to be a bad thing. I think that’s OK. Because keeping it in a bottle, suppressing your emotions, you’ll race silly.”
Finucane giggles and one is reminded how very young she is. She has only been part of the elite programme for a couple of years. Sitting in the velodrome, looking down on Jason Kenny training the men’s sprint team, she remarks what a thrill it was when he first took any notice of her. “He rolled me up for a keirin once and I was like ‘Oh my god, it’s Jason Kenny!’ And he’s like, ‘Come on, Emma.’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, let’s go!’ Having people like that, surrounding you every day, it is cool. That I come and train and Sir Jason Kenny’s there coaching the boys.”
‘My dream as a 10-year-old was to ride in the Tour de France’
Finucane was not always into track cycling. In fact she wasn’t into cycling full stop. Her dad played rugby, her mum ran. “We did everything, scouts, running, triathlons, netball. And then we started doing cycling in my local velodrome in Carmarthen. We lived on an army base, which was just like right next to it. And me and my sister Rosie, who is 11 months younger than me, used to ride round the velodrome, do cyclocross. And then when you got to 10, that’s when you were allowed to go on the track.”
At first, Finucane was more into the endurance of things. At the nationals one year she won the 500m time trial and the sprint. But she also won the Madison and the scratch race in her age group. It was former GB sprinter Matt Crampton who advised her to focus on the sprint events.
“I was like ‘What?’ I hated the gym! I hated doing two laps and then coming off. I just didn’t understand it. My dream as a 10-year-old was always to ride in the Tour de France. And I still love road cycling. But then I became European champion and I was like, ‘Oh, actually, this could be alright!’”
Finucane applied to join the GB programme and moved up to Manchester to live in a house with other young riders such as Hamish Turnbull, Millie Tanner, Lewis Stewart, and later Hayden Norris. “It was the best time of life,” she says. “It was like a little family and I really grew up. Millie taught me how to clean, cook chicken and Hamish would teach me how to do the washing. You go home to them, you watch TV with them, you have the emotional roller coaster with them. I loved it…”
Finucane now lives with fellow Carmarthen rider Jess Roberts in Bredbury, and still does not really enjoy the gym. She says she can “only” hit about 1500 watts in a sprint. When I put it to her that this sounds like quite a lot, she laughs. “Mate, some of the girls in the other teams are putting out crazy numbers. But it’s how you use that. I’m not the most powerful girl on the scene, but I can win bike races. I just do it slightly differently. So like my max power half the time is nowhere near the other girls but like maybe I’m more efficient on the bike.”
The presence of Harold ensures she has to do things slightly differently. Finucane cannot do squats in the gym for instance. She tried at first because she felt that everyone else was. But it soon became obvious to her coach that it was doing more harm than good. “One of my legs is longer than the other,” she shrugs.
“I’ve always been a bit wonky. Now I do other exercises. And I’ve kind of figured out that, like, ‘That’s me’. I’m in my own lane. I can lift big weights in other exercises, the leg press or whatever. We don’t all have to do the same programme.”
Will it be a big moment saying goodbye to Harold? “He might grow back!” she says, laughing. “I remember speaking to the surgeon. They were like ‘It’s not guaranteed that it won’t’.” But yes, Finucane is ready. A huge F1 fan, she is also looking forward to going to Monza next month for the Italian Grand Prix. “I’m an OG,” she makes clear. “Not a Netflix newbie.” Who’s her favourite driver? “It used to be Max. Now I’m Team Lando.”
‘We’re going to have to break a world record’
First, she has the small matter of the Olympics to deal with. Finucane is clear that Monday’s team sprint – it is the first time that Britain has qualified for a women’s team sprint since Victoria Pendleton and Jess Varnish were controversially disqualified at London 2012 – is her top priority. “It’s the most controllable event,” she explains. “Three girls, three laps and you know roughly what it’s going to take to win gold. You’re going to have to break a world record. We know that.”
Win the team sprint, Finucane figures, and everything else is a bonus. She smiles again. “Am I ready? I guess two years ago, I didn’t think I’d even be going to Paris and now I’m world champion and everyone is tipping me for big things. I don’t know. I’m just trying to do my best. I’m trying to make the younger me proud.
“The Olympics is everyone’s dream. I’ve dreamt about it since I was about 10. So yeah, I guess… am I ready? I’ll probably never be. But I’ll give it a go.”
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