Six titles at the British Track Championships went back to the same house in suburban Manchester, after sprint couple Matthew Richardson and Emma Finucane clean swept all of their events.
The pair won three gold medals apiece last week – sprint, keirin and team sprint – and in commanding fashion, too, both going undefeated in every heat across the four days.
After the competition finished on Sunday, and the fans filed out, Richardson and Finucane hung back to pose together trackside for the cameras. The photo will now make for the perfect mantelpiece keepsake: a memento to mark a faultless week of racing.
Speaking to Cycling Weekly, Finucane put her success down to “hard work, determination, and the love for winning”.
“The little me is so proud of myself,” said the 23-year-old, who raced on Sunday in the blue bands of European sprint champion. “You don’t know how long your career is going to be, so every moment like this, racing in front of my family and friends, I want to take it. I really enjoyed racing my bike here, and that’s what it’s about.”
After gapping the rest of the field in the keirin final earlier in the week, Finucane put daylight into her rivals again in the sprint on Sunday, ultimately beating Iona Moir 2-0 in the final.
One of the riders she knocked out during the day was PhD student Kathryn Hinton, who described competing against Finucane as “like trying to race a rocket ship”.
“She could do it with her eyes closed, and still be two seconds ahead of me,” Hinton said of the recent 200m flying lap world record breaker. “But it’s cool. She’s in the most phenomenal shape of any woman in track cycling history ever.”
The gulf between Richardson and his competitors was perhaps even larger. Racing for the first time as European sprint and keirin champion, the 26-year-old said the competition was “my training for the week”, and still laid waste to every race.
He rounded off back-to-back trebles with a resounding victory in the keirin on Sunday, attacking long with two laps to go.
“I felt like I needed a little bit more of a longer effort to keep that aerobic fitness in for this week’s training,” Richardson said afterwards.
Asked earlier in the week what motivates him to compete at the Nationals, he said: “I think it’s important that we support racing in general, but obviously, especially British racing. The sport will die if we don’t race and we don’t put on a good show. I’m trying to do my bit to keep the sport alive.”
Elsewhere on the final day of the British Track Championships, 18-year-old Erin Boothman stunned Olympic medallists Anna Morris and Katie Archibald to win the elimination race.
There was an unexpected winner, too, in the men’s points race, as 20-year-old Ben Marsh edged out individual pursuit champion Charlie Tanfield by just three points, winning with a tally of 57 to 54. The commissaires inside the velodrome initially declared Will Perrett to have retained his title – he celebrated with a raised fist as a result – before recounting the points and changing their decision before the podium ceremony.
The para-cycling trio of Jody Cundy, Rebecca Newark and Jacob Smith won the C1-5 mixed team sprint.
