Cyclist
Emma Finucane Q&A: ‘The goalposts just keep moving’
Heading into the National Track Championships, you’ve had a hugely successful start to the season, winning one gold and two silvers at the European Championships in January. How do you feel your preparation for this weekend has been?
I’m really excited to ride nationals. Obviously with it being in Manchester, where I’m from and where I live, it’ll be really good to experience a home crowd. This year has started really well for me – Europeans were really successful and Team GB as a whole did really well, and the women’s sprint team won gold in the Adelaide World Cup. I’m only competing in team sprint, but I’m really excited to watch and be a part of it from the crowd perspective. It’ll be nice to see all where the younger talent are and how they’re progressing.
So you’re not going to defend the rest of last year’s titles [individual sprint, keirin and 500m time trial]?
No, unfortunately, not. I wish I was and kind of half of me wishes I was racing. But yeah, it doesn’t quite fit in with our prep as we’re going to Hong Kong for the Nations Cup in two weeks. but I will be competing for the team sprint national title.
After a breakout year do you feel pressure to replicate those successes this year? Does it feel like you’ve got a target on your back?
Yeah, it does a bit because after winning the Worlds I’m now wearing the stripes when I compete. And I’ve tried to learn to almost flip it in a way, so instead of having a target on my back, which I obviously do, I’m trying to be like, I only get to wear these stripes for a year. And I’m trying to embrace it and just have fun racing my bike. It’s been quite hard, I’ve been through quite a few challenges. Obviously this year being an Olympic year, the pinnacle of track cycling is the Olympics, that’s the whole focus of this training block so I’m trying to embrace it, learn from it and enjoy riding my bike.
And does it feel extra special racing in rainbow stripes?
Yeah, it does, it’s an honour racing in them for the year. It’s definitely really special but it comes with a lot more pressure and a lot more expectation. You have to manage it as you go along and remember why you won it and how you won it and that you deserve them. Every time I read the sprint, I get to wear them and it reminds me that I am World Champion.
What are your big goals for the season, especially given it’s an Olympic year?
I’ve dreamed of going to the Olympics since I was about 10 years old, ever since I was a little girl watching the London Olympics in France with my family and seeing Team GB literally win everything. I knew that I’d love to have gone but I didn’t know when or what Olympics or how – I didn’t even realise I could do sprint because I was an endurance rider for a long time. So yeah, it’s a massive dream of mine and it’s pretty cool that I’m kind of living my dream. I’m just trying to enjoy the journey and hopefully I’ll get selected and compete for my country. And it’s exciting because as the Team GB women’s sprint, I feel like we’re in a really good place to do well at the Olympics, not just compete as Olympians.
What made you decide to switch from endurance to sprint, and what was that like?
When I was younger I did cyclocross, road, I did a bit of everything to be honest. I went onto the track when I was about 10 but it was predominantly endurance races. I only really knew what sprinting was at about 14, 15, and that women could do it. Matt Crampton, who was a sprint coach was like, ‘You should apply for the sprint programme.’ I loved in endurance racing sitting in the sprint at the end – I was the annoying one that everyone was like, ‘She never does any work, she just sits in,’ and I was like, ‘oh, okay, I’ve got a bit of a sprint on me!’
So I applied and I loved it ever since. It was a pretty hard transition, because obviously you do a lot less riding on your bike, you do a lot more in the gym and I loved riding my bike. So that was an adjustment but I loved it. It’s such a different way of riding, you’ve got to be stronger, you’ve got to be really powerful. I feel like more women should like to try and get into sprinting and I’d like to show that it is possible, it’s not just endurance that do track, sprinters do too.
How do you approach the mental side of being an athlete?
That side is really interesting for me. I learned quite a lot about myself last year mentally because we’re only competing for 10 seconds, 40 seconds, the longest race I do think is about a minute, which is the keirin. So you don’t get much time, you can’t really make mistakes, you have to think and make decisions really quickly. Half of the preparation is mental and half is physical, which is very different for me coming from endurance, where you have a lot more time to make decisions, you can feel the race, whereas for us, we don’t have time.
At the Worlds I didn’t struggle with it but I learned a lot about myself how to be mentally strong and overcoming nerves and the pressure. I feel like every race you do you learn, like I learned a lot from Worlds and I’ve learned from having to compete with the rainbow stripes and how to deal with that. You need to be mentally ready on that start line.
Do you have a favourite type of race?
I love the team sprint to be honest. I feel like it’s quite controllable. I love feeling part of a team on that startline, it’s nice that we’re all up for it, and I like being the third rider so I finish it off. But I like them all, [individual] sprint is quite challenging because you’re quite exposed. The keirin is a fun event, it’s like proper racing.
What’s your relationship like with your teammates?
We have quite a big women’s sprint squad: there’s four podium athletes and four or five Academy athletes, and about six or seven potentially trying to go to the Games. In terms of competing against each other for spots it can be quite difficult at times, but it’s also helped us. I think that’s why we are where we are because we’re not complacent, we’ve all had to compete for our spots and our coaches have been really good at pushing us. But now we kind of have an outline, so I’m the P3 [third rider], and there’s P2s and P1s so people have their own individual place.
At the end of the day sprinting is black and white, the quickest rider will go in the team, so that does make it easier. But also being part of the team is really important, every day you’ve got to motivate each other and be there for each other. And if you have bad days, you’ll be there for the person that’s having a bad day or if you have really successful days, you’ll be there for them. We’ve got a really good team environment and that will continue to the Olympics and really help us.
You’ve had some great successes with the team but also some nail-biting losses, including to Germany in last year’s World Championships team sprint final. What was it like coming to terms with that?
It was literally less than the blink of an eye, I can’t really explain it, it was so close. The previous year we were in the bronze medal ride off and we’d never really made a gold final. So that was huge for us in itself, being up there against the Germans was a huge success for the women’s sprint. But coming that close to gold is bittersweet: you want it so bad, but also, the times we put down throughout the day were literally world class and I don’t think we could have done anything else, which is hard. But I feel like it will come and I’m really excited to see how close we are and we’ll keep pushing. It was really hard to process that but we’ve got to see the bigger picture: in the grand scheme of things to have a team sprint at that level was amazing. And I think it’s just pushing us more for Paris and the upcoming events – we just won Adelaide World Cup and that’s the first time in 11 years that our women’s team sprint has won. So the goalposts keep moving.
Do you feel even more driven then by those narrow losses?
Yeah, for sure. The Worlds was kind of a rollercoaster for me. I was really, really happy with the performances and then I crashed and got knocked out of the keirin and that was one of the lowest points. And then I kind of bounced back and used that drive and that energy to be like, ‘No, I can do this for sprint,’ and then I won the sprint. So it’s such a mental game, you have to pick yourself back up. In Adelaide I was pretty disappointed with my sprint performance, but then bounced back and did well in the keirin. So it’s quite hard, it’s quite fast paced, you kind of need to take hold of the highs, but the lows are really important too. That’s when the team comes into it because you need the team around you to help you.
You’ve set a few individual records: fastest 200m flying sprint at sea level, first British female sprint champion at the European Championships. Is setting those records a driving factor for you?
I actually didn’t know that I made history. I think they said it on the commentary, I was like, ‘Oh, wow, I didn’t know that a GB woman had never won the European sprint.’ I also didn’t know that it’d been ten years since a GB woman had won the Worlds. I take each race that comes and the goal is to win, but it’s pretty cool to find out these things because if I was to look at the records before I’d think, ‘I don’t think I can do that.’ Katie [Archibald] made history as well, which was amazing [winning 20 European gold medals, an outright record]. GB did the best ever Europeans ever, which just adds to the success.
Having achieved so much at a young age, now being the one to watch, do you ever get a feeling of ‘What can I do next?’ And having that pressure on you?
I never thought this early on in my career I’d be winning Worlds and European titles. I thought maybe in five years. I had no idea I could do it at 20 years old, I knew going into the Worlds I’d be in good form, but winning was something else. As athletes, we always move our goalposts and for me, I guess those medals have just come earlier than I thought, but now you’ve won one Worlds, you want to win more. It’s really exciting that I have the rest of my career to figure out what else I can do and see what else I can push my body to do. It is kind of mad that I’ve done it this age, but the goalposts just keep moving.
To top off a great year for you, what was it like winning Wales Sports Personality of the Year in 2023?
I grew up in Wales, I competed for Wales in a few road races, and then Commies [Commonwealth Games] were huge for me, putting that jersey on and racing in front of basically a home crowd because it was in London, in the final for team spirit, we raced the Aussies so we were the home nation in that point. And they were screaming for us and I remember riding down the back straight having goosebumps because they were shouting my name. It was a surreal moment to compete for a home nation and then getting two bronze medals was unreal.
Winning Welsh Sports Personality of the Year was just crazy. Someone showed me a video of Geraint Thomas saying congratulations – it was such a crazy moment. I just didn’t think I’d be on the plaque with names such as Gareth Bale and Tanni Grey Thompson. And I was reading all the people off and I was thinking, ‘It’s crazy that people recognise what you’ve achieved’, and I just couldn’t believe it. I’m really, really proud to be Welsh so it was such a special moment for me.
Looking ahead to the Olympics, who are your big rivals? Who will you be watching out for?
There’s so many girls at the top level. In the last couple of years the sprint World Champion has been a different person every year, whereas for the boys Harrie Lavreysen has won it for the past five times, which is crazy. Obviously the Germans who are really, really strong, of the Brits Sophie [Capewell] and Katy [Marchant] are really strong, the French girls, obviously a home Olympics, you never know what they can pull out. The Chinese are up there as well, the New Zealand girls. It’s gonna be a really interesting competition.
What was your route into cycling in the first place?
I started cycling when I was eight. My parents took me down to my local velodrome in Carmarthen with my brother and sister, and I just loved that it was a sport where you can make friends and it was really inclusive, and I could just get on my bike – I had a pink bike with little tassels on it – and ride. The Newport velodrome is an hour and a half away so my parents had to drive me about up the M4 a lot! We went every week, I did a bit of cyclocross and road, and I started to compete. Nationals was the biggest race of the year for us as juniors and elite. Once I started to win a few races, I started to get recognized a little bit, but I still just loved it as a little kid. I did a lot of different sports.
Around 16 you apply for Junior Academy, the pathway on to the GB program, and I actually got into the program for sprint – bearing in mind I didn’t really know anything about it. I didn’t think it could be a career at that point. And then I was asked to come onto Senior Academy and moved to Manchester. I left home at 18, which was pretty big for me – I’m pretty close to my family, and they live quite far away in Wales. I learned how to cook, clean, how to live on my own and live with other athletes. And my career quite quickly progressed when I got on to the podium at the Commonwealth Games, Europeans and then last year was unreal. It’s been a very quick transition – two years ago I wasn’t even part of the team sprint. It’s just been amazing.
Did you grow up in quite a competitive household?
Yes, for sure. My mom would always push me, my brother, and sister to push ourselves and do things. I did swimming, netball, running. And we were quite an outgoing family – my mum was a doer. My family are quite competitive, even when playing board games like Monopoly or Risk, it always gets so intense. My sister stopped racing, I think when she was about 14, 15, 16, around that time, because she didn’t like the pressure. Whereas I kind of thrived, I love competing, I could handle a bit of pressure and I became really independent from it. My family have always been so supportive, and they’ve always been so proud of me so I really, really appreciate them. If it wasn’t for them, I would not be here.
On the flip side, do you feel like you’ve had to make sacrifices to get where you are, and missed out in some ways during your teenage years?
I guess I wouldn’t use the word sacrifice, more of a choice. I chose to not go on nights out, I chose to have this lifestyle because I wanted to win, to have the best sleep, the best nutrition and things. So yeah, it has been hard sometimes and I don’t see my family very often because they are four and a half hours away. But when you win Worlds and do all these amazing things I know the choices I’ve made are worth it. I have missed out on a lot of things like parties, but this is what I want to do and I’m really passionate about this.
And would you ever be tempted to branch out from track again?
It’s funny because I when I started cycling, I wanted to be on the road because that’s what I looked up to, like Laura Kenny and Katie Archibald and then I went down the avenue of sprinting. But I do have a soft spot for road, I love watching it and they race a lot more than we do. So I don’t know, we’ll see – I’m young, so I’ll just see how it goes. But I’ll always have a passion for cycling in general.
One of my close friends is Beth [Shriever], and I didn’t really know much about BMX before we were friends and now I know a lot about it. So I think all cycling disciplines are really cool and yeah, never say never. You meet so many people along the way – I’ve just been to Australia, and I’ve made so many friends from different countries. I just love the community.
Looking ahead to the revival of the Women’s Tour this summer, how important do you think races like that are for women’s cycling and racing in the UK?
I think it is really important. It’s only the past two years that women have got their own Tour de France, and the Women’s Tour is huge so it not happening this year is really, really sad, because it is growing so much. We compete the same as men and I think it’s really important that we’re recognized – that’s why I really like the women’s sprint. In Tokyo, it was only Katy Marchant who went, and now there’s eight or nine of us in the programme and I think it’s really important that we keep pushing that. So I’ve seen a big growth in women’s sport and hopefully, it’ll keep moving forward and people will engage more, because women’s sport is really exciting. I think it’s definitely moving in the right direction and I hope it continues.
What do you think needs to be done to build on the growth of women’s cycling?
I think there needs to be more of an understanding, especially for sprint, what sprinting is and how you can get into it. I think going into schools and showing younger kids that we are really strong in the gym, which is okay because our bodies need to produce a lot of power. I feel like some women don’t want to get into sprinting maybe because of the body type you get, or having to go into the gym, so I think that’d be a really cool way to get women into the sport. And some women won’t go on the road because of safety, so I think showing that you can be safe on the road and how to do that is really important. It’s so important to get women more engaged in sport. I definitely think it’s a fear thing: don’t be scared, go for it, and just see what your body can do. It’s really exciting that more people are getting on bikes and just not being afraid.
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