Bubbly, good-natured, it is not that Finucane does not suffer from pressure. She does. Finucane (pronounced ‘Fi-NOO-kuhn’), who grew up on an army base in the Welsh town of Carmarthen, famously went for a little cry in the toilets of Glasgow Velodrome before becoming sprint world champion last summer at the age of just 20. It is just that she seems to be learning better and better how to deal with it.
“It has been a huge thing, learning how to manage racing as world champion,” she says. “I went through so many emotions. I’ve done a lot of work with the GB psychs. I’ve built coping strategies. Like speaking to people, or watching YouTube videos, listening to music, going for walks. The Euros [the European Track Cycling Championships in January] was a really proud moment for me, because I won with the pressure.
“Now it’s the pressure of people saying I’m going to win three golds. And it’s hard. You want to try and use it to be really confident. But I’m not really that type of person to just walk around and be like that [Finucane mimes swaggering].
“I guess I’ll just try to own it,” she says. “The emotions might come out. Like in Glasgow when I had to go to the toilet. I might experience that again. But I know that feeling now. It doesn’t have to be a bad thing. I think that’s OK. Because keeping it in a bottle, suppressing your emotions, you’ll race silly.”
Finucane giggles and one is reminded how very young she is. She has only been part of the elite programme for a couple of years. Sitting in the velodrome, looking down on Jason Kenny training the men’s sprint team, she remarks what a thrill it was when he first took any notice of her. “He rolled me up for a keirin once and I was like ‘Oh my god, it’s Jason Kenny!’ And he’s like, ‘Come on, Emma.’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, let’s go!’ Having people like that, surrounding you every day, it is cool. That I come and train and Sir Jason Kenny’s there coaching the boys.”
‘My dream as a 10-year-old was to ride in the Tour de France’
Finucane was not always into track cycling. In fact she wasn’t into cycling full stop. Her dad played rugby, her mum ran. “We did everything, scouts, running, triathlons, netball. And then we started doing cycling in my local velodrome in Carmarthen. We lived on an army base, which was just like right next to it. And me and my sister Rosie, who is 11 months younger than me, used to ride round the velodrome, do cyclocross. And then when you got to 10, that’s when you were allowed to go on the track.”
At first, Finucane was more into the endurance of things. At the nationals one year she won the 500m time trial and the sprint. But she also won the Madison and the scratch race in her age group. It was former GB sprinter Matt Crampton who advised her to focus on the sprint events.
“I was like ‘What?’ I hated the gym! I hated doing two laps and then coming off. I just didn’t understand it. My dream as a 10-year-old was always to ride in the Tour de France. And I still love road cycling. But then I became European champion and I was like, ‘Oh, actually, this could be alright!’”