Counting down the days to the Olympic sprint finals, Emma Finucane and Sophie Capewell tell Tom Davidson about their final push to find that decisive tenth of a second
lat white please,” say Emma Finucane and Sophie Capewell in unison.
It’s a well-rehearsed coffee order, one that GB’s track sprinting duo have made a hobby of placing around the world. They ’ve asked for it at competitions in Switzerland and Egypt, Australia and Hong Kong. Today, though, they ’re a stone’s throw from home. It’s late February, the morning after the National Track Championships, and we’re in Manchester, sitting in a cafe in the trendy A ncoats district, north of the city centre. The sign on the door reads ‘Off The Press’ – Finucane has chosen an apt spot for a magazine interview, notes accompanying press officer, British Cycling’s Ellie Stott.
We remove our jackets and assemble at a round, wooden table. “I never used to be a flat white girl,” says Finucane, the Welsh-born world and European sprint champion. “I used to be a cappuccino girl.” Capewell’s a bit of a coffee connoisseur, she explains, and has her own machine at home. “I can do a tulip,” she says proudly, when I ask about her latte art repertoire, “but that ’s as much as I can do so far.”
What Capewell lacks in milk-pouring skills, however, she makes up for in her ability on the track. This August, she and Finucane will go to the Paris Olympics as two of GB’s brightest medal hopes. They ’re part of the new wave in the women’s sprint team, a pillar of the GB track squad that has struggled in recent years, but having failed to qualify for the previous two Olympic Games, now looks odds-on for success.
The walls of the cafe are made almost entirely of glass. Sunlight cascades through, across the countertops, bathing the giant potted plants that are as tall as the ceiling. Outside, the weather is crisp. Like almost every other day, today is a training day for Finucane and Capewell.
This afternoon, they ’re down to practise team sprint starts, but not without getting their fix of caffeine first. “The amount of coffee we consume is outrageous,” Finucane says. So intense are their training sessions that the pair are encouraged to take it very easy off the bike. That’s why they k now Manchester’s cafe scene better than anybody else.
Before Christmas, ahead of their first races of this key Olympic year, the women’s sprint team laboured through a tough block of weightlifting.
It’s crucial for their discipline of the sport, which hinges on going fast, putting immense power through the pedals. At the Manchester Velodrome, they share the g
