Team GB’s Emma Finucane will turn her attention to the women’s individual sprint after a bronze medal in the keirin ended her dreams of a golden Olympic hat-trick. Far from being disappointed, the 21-year-old from Carmarthen was ebullient.
“That bronze medal means everything to me after the team’s [sprint] win on Monday, with the girls,” she said. “It was so hard, but it was worth it.”
She is finding the Olympics “hard” but Finucane is definitely “living her best life,” as she put it, even sleeping with her gold medal under her pillow. “Like a little tooth fairy,” she said. “I’ll sleep with the bronze under my pillow as well. That bronze feels like a gold.”
Having won the sprint with Katy Marchant and Sophie Capewell, Finucane’s ambition to become the first British woman to win three gold medals in one Olympic Games, an achievement that would rank her alongside track cycling greats, Jason Kenny and Chris Hoy, is now beyond her.
Next up though, are three days of individual sprint matches with the race for gold on Sunday afternoon. “I’ve got nothing to lose,” she said. “I’ve got two medals already, so I will leave everything on the track and see how it goes.”
“I’ve got to make it there first. These girls are really, really strong. I know I’m up there too, but I want to enjoy my Olympics.”
Finucane and Marchant progressed from their six-lap heats to the keirin semi-finals and then the six-rider final, but not without a scare for the Welsh woman, after she narrowly scraped through her semi-final in a photo-finish. “I was like, ‘I need to leave everything on the track for that final,’” she said. “It was a really stacked field. To have [to race] six really strong women, I knew I had to dig deep.”
With four riders progressing from each of three quarter-final heats, Finucane safely qualified, finishing second to Hetty van de Houw, of the Netherlands. In the third heat, won by Mathilde Gros, of France, Marchant finished a comfortable third to also progress, alongside Finucane, to the semi-finals.
Finucane endured an anxious wait after only just edging out Steffie van der Peet, of the Netherlands, in the semi-final. That was the first indication a second gold medal might be out of reach. “Keirin’s always dodgy races,” Finucane said. “It’s not the fastest person who always wins. You can get through in different ways.”
Marchant eased into the final in less stressful circumstances and with six riders competing for gold, silver and bronze, Team GB’s duo had every reason to be confident of winning a medal.
“It still feels really good,” Marchant said of her fourth-place finish. “Monday was an absolutely spectacular day and a feeling that is going to live with me for a very long time.
Finucane, drawn in sixth place in the final, was never able to get control of the race. “I went a lap too early,” she said, “but I knew if I didn’t go then, I couldn’t wait any longer. This track, you need to go early.”
“Drawing six was a really hard position, but I did everything I could to get a medal in my first Olympics. To come away with a gold and a bronze and to have a sprint left is such a surreal moment.”
“I’m just going to take each day as it comes, because the [the individual] sprint’s over three days,” she said. “It’s a really long competition.”
The women’s individual sprint is a less volatile competition than the kierin and, as she demonstrated in last year’s world championships, offers Finucane the best opportunity of all to exploit her devastating acceleration.
There is reason to be optimistic as fearlessness and a love of speed would appear to be in her genes. Her great uncle was Brendan Finucane, who became the RAF’s youngest wing commander, at just 21 – her age now – and was the subject of a recent biopic, the Shamrock Spitfire. “Imagine flying a Spitfire,” Finucane said this week. “That would be sick.”
Expectations remain that she can win another gold and she is steadily becoming the central figure in Team GB’s track campaign. “I know the legs are there,” she said.
In the men’s omnium, less than 24 hours after he had reached what pursuit teammate Dan Bigham called his “limit” in the final lap of the men’s team pursuit, Ethan Hayter was back on the track.
The 25-year-old ended up almost crashing after sliding off his saddle on Wednesday appeared to suffer no ill-effects as he rode to eighth place in the omnium, which was won by Benjamin Thomas of France.
In the second of the omnium’s four events, the tempo race, Hayter, a former world and European title holder, failed to score any points and looked out of sorts, but in the elimination race, he rode on the front throughout, setting a relentless pace.
One by one his rivals were removed, until he faced only Italy’s Elia Viviani. The British rider’s speed was too much for Viviani and victory moved Hayter up to fifth in the standings, with 88 points. There was not enough left in his legs to lift him up the standings and in the final element, the points race, Thomas moved further ahead, despite crashing.
In the men’s sprint quarter-finals, Jack Carlin faced an uphill struggle after losing his first heat to Japan’s Kaiya Ota. In the second heat, Carlin had to win to stay in the competition, but was unable to hold off the 25-year-old from Okayama. But he was given a reprieve when the Japanese rider was disqualified, forcing a third and decisive heat. Another feisty contest ended in victory for Carlin.
