Emma Finucane hopes the world’s widest velodrome may be the key to unlocking her gold medal ambition at Paris 2024.
“It’s a much bigger velodrome,” the Team GB rider said of the Siberian pine track at Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines near Versailles. “It’s a metre wider than any other track, which means you get more momentum off the banking from the top.”
The 21-year-old from Carmarthen, the reigning world and European women’s individual sprint champion, is tipped to become one of the stars of the velodrome at these Games.
Finucane believes the eight-metre wide track that she says is “ideal for sprinting” may give her more speed when she competes in the keirin, team sprint and individual sprint in Paris. But she acknowledged the layout may make the usual jostling for position “a bit more of a battle”.
Having added a team sprint silver medal at the 2023 world track championships in Scotland, she was also one of the outstanding performers at the 2024 European championships in Apeldoorn, replicating her individual sprint success from Glasgow.
But not all velodromes are the same and that can have a nuanced effect on tactics. Finucane, however, is familiar with the velodrome west of Paris, set within sight of Elancourt Hill, scene of Tom Pidcock’s second Olympic mountain bike title on Monday.
The Welsh rider competed on the track at the 2022 world championships, taking bronze in the women’s team sprint, with Lauren Bell and Sophie Capewell. “I’ve ridden the track in one world championship. The sprinting will be quite quick,” she said.
The centre of the velodrome was used as a “vaccinodrome” during the Covid-19 pandemic, even as the French national track team trained on it. Like the rest of Team GB’s track riders, Finucane was in a holding camp in Wales before flying out on Wednesday, to prepare for the first day of competition on 5 August.
She said she is too nervous to think about a gold medal, but like any Olympian in their first Games, she cannot really help it.
“I don’t want to deny that I’d love to win gold, but it’s going to be hard. As long as I do everything right, then everything is possible, whether that’s gold or not. It will be what it will be. I just want to make everyone proud.”
Finucane described competing in the Olympics as the pinnacle of her career. “I try not to let it all faze me but I am really nervous, whatever the outcome may be,” she said.
In relative terms, she came to sprinting late, converting from road racing at 16. “In races, I used to sit in and sprint at the end,” she recalled. “I was that person that sat on and annoyed everyone else, then sprinted past to win.
“I didn’t know much about sprinting growing up, until I got asked to apply for the sprint programme, but I like to inspire young girls to get stuck in, to show that women can be muscly. I’d love to inspire young women.”
In that sense, Finucane is buying into the repositioning of British Cycling as inclusive, diverse and fuelling social mobility. A gold medal from Finucane on the wide boards of Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines would do a lot to further that cause, but for now, she insists that she “just wants to enjoy it”.
