Emma Finucane revelled in beating English rivals en route to her second medal of the Commonwealth Games.
The Carmarthen star beat Great Britain star Sophie Capewell in a best-of-three straight-up sprint to take a bronze medal at Lee Valley VeloPark.
The 19-year-old added to the team sprint bronze medal she won with Rhian Edmunds and Lowri Thomas on the opening night of racing.
She said: “This means so much. I wasn’t expecting it. I came in wanting to do the flying 200 in qualifying and not much more. I left everything on the track, and it paid off.”
Finucane laid down a superb qualifying effort of 10.804 to advance fourth-fastest and gain a favourable seeding for the rounds to come. She beat Scotland's Lusia Steele in the eighth finals and then got past Australia’s Kristina Clonan in the deciding run-off.
Finucane then came up against the irresistible force of Canada’s Olympic champion Kelsey Mitchell, who proved too much.
In the battle for bronze, Capewell drew first blood but a change of tactics from Finucane moved the deal and saw her reach the podium again.
The Welsh team sprint stable have now collected a series of significant wins over English rivals who are currently favoured for selection for the Great Britain cycling team.
Clearly those victories mean a lot to Finucane and her team-mates as they do their best to muscle in on selection for major championships to come, with the Paris Olympics just two years away.
Finucane has the 500m time trial and keirin events still to come.
“A lot of us live together in Manchester and there’s always a little battle going on,” she said. “It’s obviously nice to beat them and whenever we race it’s always really competitive.”
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