Emma Finucane hopes that the world’s largest velodrome will help her achieve her gold medal goal in Paris in 2024.
“It’s a much bigger velodrome,” the Team GB rider remarked of the Siberian pine track in Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, near Versailles. “It’s a meter wider than any other track, which means you get more momentum off the banking from the top.”
The 21-year-old Carmarthen native, who is the reigning global and European women’s individual sprint champion, is expected to be one of the Games’ velodrome stars.
Finucane feels the eight-meter-wide track, which she describes as “ideal for sprinting,” will offer her an advantage when she participates in the keirin, team sprint, and individual sprint in Paris. However, she noted that the arrangement may make the normal jostle for position “a bit more of a battle.”.
After winning a team sprint silver medal at the 2023 World Track Championships in Scotland, she was one of the top performers at the 2024 European Championships in Apeldoorn, repeating her solo sprint victory in Glasgow.
However, not all velodromes are comparable, which can have a subtle impact on tactics. Finucane is familiar with the velodrome located west of Paris, near Elancourt Hill, where Tom Pidcock won his second Olympic mountain biking title on Monday.
The Welsh cyclist participated on the track at the 2022 World Championships, winning bronze in the women’s team sprint alongside Lauren Bell and Sophie Capewell. “I rode the track in one world championship. “The sprinting will be quite quick,” she explained.
The velodrome’s center was utilized as a “vaccinodrome” during the COVID-19 pandemic, even as the French national track team practiced there. Finucane, like the rest of Team GB’s track cyclists, stayed in a holding camp in Wales before flying out on Wednesday to prepare for the opening day of competition on August 5.
She claims she is too scared to consider a gold medal, but like any first-time Olympian, she can’t help but be.
Although I don’t want to hide the fact that I’d love to win gold, I know that it’s going to be difficult. In the event that I carry out all of the necessary steps, then everything is feasible, regardless of whether or not it is gold. That is the way things are going to be. To put it simply, I want to make everyone impressed.
The event that Finucane considered to be the zenith of her career was her participation in the Olympics. “I am really nervous, regardless of the outcome,” she added. “I try not to let every single thing faze me, but I am really nervous.”
At the age of sixteen, she made the transition from road racing to sprinting, which is considered to be a late start. She added, “When I was in races, I would sit in the back and sprint at the very end.” When I was that person, I would sit on top of everyone else and annoy them, and then I would race past them to win.
When I was younger, I didn’t know much about sprinting until I was asked to apply for the sprint program. However, I enjoy having the opportunity to encourage young girls to participate in sprinting because I want to demonstrate that women can be strong. My goal is to be an example for young ladies.
In this sense, Finucane is participating in the reinvention of British cycling as an inclusive and diverse sport that also serves to propel social mobility. She says that she “just wants to enjoy it” for the time being, despite the fact that a gold medal from Finucane on the vast boards of Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines would do a lot to advance that cause.