How Emma Finucane battled through self-doubt to become Team GB’s star of the Olympics

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When Chris Hoy and Laura Kenny picked out a British cyclist to watch ahead of the Olympics in Paris, it was worth sitting up and taking notice. After seven brutal days at the Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines National Velodrome and with the pressure of being Team GB’s next great hope, Emma Finucane did not just meet those expectations but surpass them. At her first Olympics, the 21-year-old from Wales became the first British woman in 60 years to win three medals at a single Games.

A final bronze in the women’s sprint was added to gold alongside Katy Marchant and Sophie Capewell in the team sprint earlier this week, as well as another bronze in the keirin. It is a haul that even the greats of British cycling – Laura Kenny, Victoria Pendleton, Elinor Barker and fellow Welsh rider Becky James among them – did not manage, or indeed out of everyone else in Team GB’s contingent in Paris. Finucane’s bronze in the individual sprint made her the most successful British athlete of these Olympics.

There was a hint of disappointment at missing out on a second gold. The reason Finucane was so highly tipped ahead of Paris was because of how she stormed to victory in the women’s sprint at the world championships in Glasgow last year. But the Olympics are exhausting and after seven days of consecutive action in the stuffy heat of the Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines velodrome, she was beaten in the semi-finals by the eventual champion, New Zealand’s Ellesse Andrews.

Finucane responded well to ensure she claimed bronze in the small final, comfortably beating Hetty van de Wouw across both races after outmanoeuvring her Dutch opponent. “It’s like a dream,” she said. “Obviously I would have loved to win that gold medal. But a gold and two bronze is more than I could have dreamed of. I wish I had a book for someone to tell me how to get through an Olympic week. I’ve cried, I’ve had happy tears, I’ve been exhausted. To get up every day and keep fighting. I’m just really proud of myself.”

Finucane won gold in the team sprint alongside Marchant and Capewell earlier this week, smashing the world record in the race against New Zealand to win Britain’s first Olympic women’s sprint title. The manner of individual competition across both the keirin and sprint meant there were endless rounds of qualifiers and heats, victories as well as defeats.

“I’ve learned that emotions aren’t a negative and they mean they’re not weak,” she said. “I’ve cried a lot this week, and it just shows that I’m strong enough to get it out and reset. For me to be able to cry and then get on the track and reset and go again I think that’s really important, to speak to people and let it out. It’s a long week, I’ve been for seven days now, and my mind’s been on a mad one. I’ve just learned a lot about myself that I’ll take forward for the coming years.”

To target medals in three events was ambitious and led to an inner battle within the mind. But it resulted in history: the first British woman to complete a hat-trick since Mary Rand won a gold, silver and a bronze at the Tokyo Olympics in 1964. “My mind was telling me things like, ‘You can’t do it’,” she said. “I’ve dealt with the [outside] pressure pretty good this week. It was more me, like my internal pressure and how I wanted to deliver. My legs were screaming at me, telling me to stop. It’s been many emotions. But I kept on going.”

Jack Carlin had the chance to join Finucane on three medals but crashed out in the men’s keirin final. Carlin was battling to make it into the medal positions but was caught as Japanese rider Shinji Nakano and Malaysia’s Muhammad Sahrom collided and went down in front of him. It was a painful fall, but Carlin did not require the stretcher than had been prepared for him, and the 27-year-old departs having won silver in the men’s sprint and bronze in men’s team sprint.