Former world points race champion Elinor Barker-Bates has likened Emma Finucane to three of track cycling's greatest-ever sprinters, calling the 23-year-old Welsh rider "a combination of them rolled up into one neat package" BBC Sport.

Bates named Australian great Anna Meares, Britain's own Victoria Pendleton and Germany's Kristina Vogel — between them, owners of a combined haul of Olympic golds and world titles that few in the sport's history can match. To be mentioned alongside any one of them would be a career highlight for most riders. To be compared to all three at once is something else entirely.

Bates described Finucane as a "triple threat" because of three qualities that rarely sit together in one sprinter: superior technical skill on the bike, explosive acceleration, and the staying power to hold speed through the closing metres of a race. That blend is what makes her so difficult to beat in the sprint events — the short, fast track races decided by raw power and timing rather than endurance.

The praise comes with a caveat. Bates noted that Finucane has not yet competed in four Olympic Games or 15 World Championships, as some of her more seasoned rivals have. Her career, in other words, is only beginning. Even so, Bates said she is confident that in a decade's time, people will look back at what Finucane has achieved and simply marvel.

The trajectory already supports that confidence. Finucane won her first elite world championships medal — a bronze in the team sprint — at the 2022 UCI World Championships, riding alongside Sophie Capewell and Lauren Bell. The following year she became UCI World Champion at the 2023 UCI Cycling World Championships in Glasgow, delivering performances that the sport's governing body described as dominant. Then came the Olympic stage: Finucane, Capewell and Bell won team sprint gold, becoming the first British women's squad ever to claim that Olympic title.

Bates went further than retrospective praise. She said other countries are now asking themselves a blunt question two years out from the next Olympics: is it even worth trying to beat Finucane, or are they racing for silver? That is not how coaches usually talk about a rider still early in her career. It tells you how wide the gap already looks from the inside of rival programmes.

For cycling fans, the excitement is straightforward. British track sprinting has produced generational talents before — Pendleton's Olympic gold in 2008, the men's sprint dynasty of the 2010s — but Finucane is building a case that she may top all of them. She has the medals. She has the range. And at 23, she has years ahead to add to both.