The keirin, they said, was the chink in the armour of Team GB’s new sprint queen and so it proved for Emma Finucane.
Setting out with the dream of emulating Chris Hoy and Jason Kenny as a triple sprint gold medallist at a single Olympic Games, Hoy had tipped her to pull off the triumvirate.
Already she had one gold to her name - in the team sprint - and had been sleeping with it under her pillow, greeting her roommate Katy Marchant with the words “morning Olympic gold medallist” first thing.
But this was always the weakest of the 21-year-old’s trio of events with her relative lack of experience and tactical acumen in track cycling’s high-speed game of chess.
And she was upstaged by the world champion Ellesse Andrews, of New Zealand, and the Netherlands Hetty van de Wouw to finish with a bronze.
With a second Olympic medal to her name in her first Games at the age of 21, she said, “that bronze literally feels like a gold”.There is the realistic ambition of another medal - even a second gold to sneak under her pillow - come Sunday’s track finale in the individual sprint where she is the world champion and will be among the favourites.
It hadn’t been plain sailing throughout the rounds of the keirin only sneaking into the final by finishing third and in the final qualification spot in the semi-finals.
With a crowd that seemed remarkably British in its support, including her parents Rory and Susie who had driven to Paris in a hired campervan and wore navy blue Team Finucane T-shirts, it felt like home from home.
And she went into the event brimming with confidence from one gold already in the team sprint. Come the final of the keirin, an athlete labelled “the superstar” of the British team by none other than Hoy calmly put herself at the back of the pack.
Just before the derny bike pulled off, Finucane made her move up the pack and tried to raise the pace alongside Andrews with two laps to go.
But she could never find a way past the Kiwi and was also eclipsed late on by van de Wouw. Finucane's teammate Katy Marchant was fourth.
“I think I went a lap too early,” she concluded afterwards. “I gave everything I could on the track today and that bronze medal means everything to me after the team sprint on Monday with the girls. It was so, so hard but it was worth it.”
For Marchant, there was no individual medal to compare with Finucane at the start of each day and she admitted afterwards, “Fourth place is the worst place to finish.”Jack Carlin looked to have been knocked out by Kaiya Ota in a surprise result in the individual sprint after losing the first of three heats against the Japanese rider.
But Ota was belatedly relegated for veering off his line in heat two to set up a decider, which Carlin won by just half a wheel to put him into Thursday’s semi-finals.
Hamish Turnbull, also of Britain, won his opening heat against Jeffrey Hoogland but lacked the pace to go with him in the next two.
And Ethan Hayter, part of the silver medal-winning team in the pursuit the preceding night, had to make do with eighth overall in the omnium.
