Finucane wins keirin silver after sprint disappointment

Emma Finucane of Great Britain won the silver medal at the Chilean Track Cycling World Championships after falling short of the sprint champion.

Finucane, 22, made it to the sprint event’s quarter-finals on Friday, but the two-time defending champion missed out on a spot in the semi-finals due to an error.

The three-time Olympian champion put that resentment to rest as she came in second place in the keirin behind Mina Sato from Japan.

Finucane remarked, “I’m really proud.”

I think bouncing back and doing four rides that I didn’t think I could do even six months ago, I’ve grown so much and we’ll keep working on it, even though I was really gutted after the sprint.

From this World Championships, I can take a lot. They claim that winning things is sweet, but that is only the case when it is sour.

“I have so much more growth to do now than in the first year of the cycle.”

Finucane, who won three medals at the same Olympics in 2024 as the first British woman since 1964, has yet to win a significant gold in the keirin.

Anna Morris won her third medal of the Championships earlier today with a flawless final sprint in the women’s points race.

Morris won gold and bronze in the team pursuit, a further improvement over her individual pursuits.

“I’m really, really happy,” she declared. I didn’t know when it finished, because I believed it was in the top five when my coach said I was in second place,” Morris said.

“Overall, it has been a strong week.”

Matt Richardson, who resisted Australia’s switch to Great Britain last year, also won a silver medal on the final day after falling short of Dutchman Harrie Lavreysen in the men’s sprint final.

Lavreysen won the first race by 0. 0494 seconds, and Richardson won the second to claim his seventh-straight world championship gold.

Mark Stewart and Josh Tarling placed second in the men’s madison, eight points clear of the champions, behind Belgian duo Lindsay de Vylder and Fabio van den Bossche, in the 200-lap race.

That increased Great Britain’s medal total to 14 — including four gold, eight silver, and two bronze — but they finished second overall behind the Netherlands.

Sir Jason Kenny, the GB sprint coach and seven-time Olympian, said: “We’ve missed some medals that we thought we could have competed for, but we’ve come away with a really good haul with some new medallists, so it’s really exciting.”

It’s really encouraging that we were competitive across the board because we were on the podium more than ever.