Emma Finucane became Britain’s first European women’s sprint champion at the European Track Cycling Championships in the Netherlands.
The 21-year-old easily defeated Emma Hinze in the semi-finals and repeated the feat by defeating Germany’s Lea Sophie Friedrich in the World Championship final. The journey to victory. Finucane won the first two races and took the title in the second race by beating his opponent on the straight.
“To be honest, I’m speechless, I really don’t know how I’m going to compete in this game,” she said. “Obviously it’s still early in the season and this is my first time competing in the Rainbow; I’m really nervous.
“There are expectations and how you deal with the pressure and I feel like I coped with everything today and stuck to what I wanted to achieve yesterday on the track. I wanted to race aggressively and I feel like I did that. It’s really special and I hope This momentum can continue.”
Dan Bigham beat Charlie Tanfield in the All-British men’s individual pursuit final, winning in 4 minutes 5.783 seconds.
“It was pretty cool, the national finals. I knew I could beat him, I was cruising in qualifying, but in the finals my legs weren’t there. I had to really dig deep and just focus on the little details to figure it all out,” Bigham said.
“I wish I could have been a little better in terms of time, but a win is a win. I want to beat Charlie and I’m sure he wants to beat me. We take it very seriously and we’re not here to mess up. We want to win, I think It’s a very good mentality.”
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Britain’s Nee Evans also won silver in the women’s all-around. Evans finished fourth in the scratch, rhythm and elimination races and, despite finishing second in the points race, was unable to overturn the advantage of gold medalist Anita Yvonne Steinberg of Norway.
