Emma Finucane is used to being in the lead.

Ever since bursting onto the scene as a teenager at the 2022 Commonwealth Games, Finucane has been a leading light of Great British cycling. Taking home a bronze in the team sprint and individual sprint, the then 19-year-old from Carmarthen has been a world-leading cyclist ever since.

A break-out 2022 ended with a World Championships bronze, and 2023 followed further success and recognition.

Wins in four events at the National Track Championships – sprint, team sprint, keirin, and 500m time trial – marked Finucane out as the next in a long line of great Welsh cyclists.

The World Championships in Glasgow followed, as did more medals. Gold in the individual sprint and silver in the team sprint. Suddenly Finucane went from a name known only to those within cycling circles to an Olympic ‘one-to-watch’.

Such was her achievement, only Victoria Pendleton and Wales’ Becky James had won an individual sprint world title for Britain before.

Further recognition followed as Finucane became only the Welsh cyclist aside from a certain Geraint Thomas to win BBC Cymru Sports Personality of the Year in 2023.

Should Finucane win gold in the individual sprint at Paris, she would become the youngest ever to do so.

One would expect to have achieved so much and such a young age would be daunting.

“I get asked about pressure a lot,” Finucane says.

“For me, it’s all about managing it. I try to use the pressure as confidence because it’s taking negative energy and making it into a positive that I can use in a race.

“Lots of people now believe in me, which is an amazing feeling, but I have my own expectations. My own goals and processes are something I will stick to in Paris.”

For Finucane, the 2024 Paris Olympics is her first Games, and she is keen to enjoy every minute.

“As long as I have a really strong feeling of enjoying the journey, making memories and remembering the little things, the outcomes will take care of themselves,” she adds.

“I want to be able to look back on Paris and remember that I didn’t get too wrapped up in the nerves of competing and the pressure.

“If my heart and my head are happy, then what will be will be and I’m just going to ride my bike and hopefully win a few races.”

In a sport where the difference between first and last can be a fraction of a second, Finucane understands that the battle is as much a mental one as it is physical.

“It’s all about staying present,” Finucane explains.

“I’d say its 50/50 mental and physical. If you don’t have that 50% mental, then physically you can be in the best shape of your life, but you will lose straightaway.

“Managing the mental side is my number one goal for the Games because I know I’m ready physically.”

Finucane is the leader of an emerging Welsh peloton on the track, with fellow sprinter Lowri Thomas travelling as a reserve, and sisters Elinor and Megan Barker also expected to be named as part of the endurance track team.

Elinor, the elder of the two, is already a Welsh Olympic star, taking home a gold and silver in the team pursuit at Rio and Tokyo, respectively.

Part of a historic quartet of Laura Trott, Katie Archibald, and Joanna Rowsell Shand, Elinor has won a remarkable seven world titles and 10 European titles, with her first world crown coming in 2013 aged just 18.

With Trott and Rowsell Shand now retired, and Archibald out of the Olympics with a freak leg-break, Elinor is now the old head of the team and is set to be joined by younger sister Megan.

Megan Barker has been in and around the British team pursuit squad ever since the last Games, becoming more of a regular fixture when Elinor had her first child, Nico, in 2022.

A mark of the competitor in Elinor was the pace of her return to professional racing. Nico was born in March 2022 and Elinor was competing again, representing Wales, just months later at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham.

But it was last year when Barker really announced her return to the top. She won two gold medals at the World Championships in Glasgow, taking her overall tally of world titles to seven. What made this all the sweeter was that one of the golds was won in the women’s team pursuit alongside sister Megan, in what was her first world gold medal.

The Welsh contingent of the Team GB cycling squad does not end there. Another breakout star of the 2022 National Championships, Josh Tarling, will be competing in the road race and time trial, with Tour de France competitor Stephen Williams joining him for the road race.

Williams has endured a difficult journey through the ranks in cycling. Starring at a young age at the Baby Giro, Giro d’Italia for U23 riders, he then struggled with a chronic knee issue before being left without a team at the end of 2022, after the team he was set to join folded.

However, since joining new team – Israel-Premier Tech – Williams’ form has improved, winning several smaller stage races before the coup de grâce: becoming the first Briton to win Ronde van Vlaanderen, one of cycling’s five big one-day monuments.

This year he is competing at his maiden Tour de France, making the journey from the end of the race in Nice on France’s south coast to join Tarling in Paris.

While Finucane is the Welsh star of the track sprint, Tarling is king of the road time trial.

In 2023, Tarling won the elite time trial at the European Championships in Drenthe, a coronation of sorts for a cyclist who had dominated the junior ranks in the few years previous.

2024 has been just as successful for the Aberaeron rider, with victory in the British National Championship time trial, serving as ideal preparation for Paris where he will face off against Belgian world time trial champion Remco Evenepoel among others.

At the British National championships, Tarling won in convincing style. The kind of which is taken notice by those writing ‘Britain’s best medal hope’ articles in the lead up to the Games this month. A margin of one minute and 14 seconds over second-place Max Walker has set him up nicely for July 27th: the day of the Paris time trial.

While Tarling’s career trajectory has taken him to more and more titles in recent years, a recent injury has threatened to derail this year.

At Paris-Roubaix in April, Tarling suffered a broken bone in his knee, meaning he spent several weeks off the bike, only returning to racing in late May. While the 20-year-old has admitted that he has felt the effects of those lost weeks, he is trusting the team’s process heading into the 2024 Games.

Tarling, Finucane, and the rest of the Welsh representatives on the Team GB cycling team have plenty of history to look back at if ever they need inspiration.

For the sprinters, the obvious hero is Becky James. The Abergavenny track cyclist won two silver medals at Rio in 2016, in the keirin and individual sprint.

It would not be a Welsh story without an illusion to the fact that everyone seems to know each other: Lowri Thomas, reserve team sprinter, was coached by James’ sister, Rachel, who has had an extremely successful career riding as a pilot for 13-time world para-cyclist champion Sophie Thornhill.

The biggest inspiration for Tarling and any Welsh road cyclist is two-time Olympic gold medallist and former Tour de France winner Geraint Thomas.

Famously from the same school as Gareth Bale and Sam Warburton, Thomas began his career balancing both his track and road exploits, winning back-to-back gold medals in the team pursuit at the Beijing and London Games.

He then went on to join Team Sky in 2010, becoming Chris Froome’s right-hand-man for several years at Le Tour before winning the race himself in 2018.

Further podium finishes in 2019 and 2022, alongside consecutive podium finishes at the Giro D’Italia in 2023 and 2024 have cemented Thomas’ place amongst the very best modern road cyclists, and he is a figure to aspire to for any Welsh road cyclist.

Alongside Ineos Grenadiers teammate Luke Rowe, Becky James and Rowe’s sister-in-law Dani, Thomas has been part of a golden generation of Welsh cyclists but 2022 and, in particular, the Commonwealth Games marked the start of another.

With Tarling storming to four separate junior time trial titles earlier in the year, the Welsh trio of Finucane, Thomas, and Rhian Edmunds took bronze in the team pursuit in Birmingham, before Finucane won another bronze in the individual sprint.

“It was such a cool experience,” says Finucane.

“Especially performing in the red of Wales. For anyone in Britain, the opportunity to wear their nation’s colours, whether it’s England, Scotland, or Northern Ireland, the Commonwealth Games are almost on par with the Olympics.

“To compete with Lowri and Rhian was amazing. We were all so young and to see where we are now ahead of the Games is pretty special. I had no idea what to expect from the Commies, but to come away with two bronze medals was insane.”

Finucane, though, is now a known quantity within the world of cycling and is now used to the media attention that comes with it.

“I didn’t really know that the Commonwealths was going to be a springboard for my career,” says Finucane.

“I just thought, ‘oh, this is pretty cool’ as I started to get more media attention. From there, I just kept going and going. And now I’m going to an Olympics!”