Latest news with #EmmaFinucane
Yahoo
02-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Documentary celebrates success of Welsh cycling hero Emma Finucane
A documentary has been made about the young life and meteoric rise of Welsh cyclist and Olympic hero Emma Finucane. The cycling star, 22, made history in Paris last summer when she became the first British woman in 60 years to win three medals at the same Olympic Games and the first Welsh athlete to ever achieve that feat. The Paris Olympics was not the Carmarthen cyclist's first taste of success by a long shot - in 2022 she came home from the Commonwealth Games having won two bronze medals for Wales, while in 2023 she won a gold medal at the World Championships in Glasgow, a feat she repeated last year at the 2024 championships in Denmark. It's all a far cry from when Finucane used to whizz around the historic velodrome at Carmarthen Park as a young girl with Towy Riders cycle club, a group which is still going strong today. Stay informed on Carms news by signing up to our newsletter here. READ MORE: Man dies in Cardiff city centre READ MORE: Two arrests after fatal quadbike crash on A465 Heads of the Valleys road Now, a Cardiff-based student has made a 'powerful short documentary' capturing Finucane's rise to the top of world cycling. The film - Pedal to Paris: The Emma Finucane Story - has been created by Cameron Hitt, who is studying a sports broadcast masters degree at Cardiff Metropolitan University. It will premiere at Nantgaredig Rugby Club, in partnership with Towy Riders, on Monday (June 2). The film will then be made publicly available the following day, on Tuesday, June 3. We caught up with Finucane at Carmarthen Park last year, just weeks after she returned home from Paris with three Olympic medals around her neck. 'I remember, when I was seven years old, coming here with my brother and sister,' she said. 'We lived just across the road. I would go round and round the track on my little pink bike with tassels on it. That was it - I was hooked.' On her success, she said: 'It has changed my life. I'm still the same old Emma, but you are kind of in a bubble at the Olympics so you don't really see what's going on around you. "But then you come back home and I've been asked for pictures in Tesco a couple of times and people say: 'Ooh, I've seen you on the telly!' 'I love it. I love being home and coming back to see everyone. I'm very honoured to be asked to attend events. I don't come home often and to be recognised for what I've done at the Olympics is amazing. 'As athletes we obviously have our own ambitions in terms of winning but I want people to watch us and get on their bikes. I want to inspire people to get out there and cycle - it's a healthy way of life. "Sport is amazing, it gives you energy, and I want to use my platform to help young girls and boys get into sprint cycling.'
Wales Online
27-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Wales Online
Documentary celebrates success of Welsh cycling hero Emma Finucane
Documentary celebrates success of Welsh cycling hero Emma Finucane Finucane became the first British woman in 60 years to win three medals at the same Olympic Games in Paris last summer Olympic champion Emma Finucane (Image: John Myers ) A documentary has been made about the young life and meteoric rise of Welsh cyclist and Olympic hero Emma Finucane. The cycling star, 22, made history in Paris last summer when she became the first British woman in 60 years to win three medals at the same Olympic Games and the first Welsh athlete to ever achieve that feat. The Paris Olympics was not the Carmarthen cyclist's first taste of success by a long shot - in 2022 she came home from the Commonwealth Games having won two bronze medals for Wales, while in 2023 she won a gold medal at the World Championships in Glasgow, a feat she repeated last year at the 2024 championships in Denmark. It's all a far cry from when Finucane used to whizz around the historic velodrome at Carmarthen Park as a young girl with Towy Riders cycle club, a group which is still going strong today. Stay informed on Carms news by signing up to our newsletter here . Now, a Cardiff-based student has made a 'powerful short documentary' capturing Finucane's rise to the top of world cycling. The film - Pedal to Paris: The Emma Finucane Story - will premiere at Nantgaredig Rugby Club, in partnership with Towy Riders, next Monday. The film will then be made publicly available the following day, on Tuesday, June 3. Finucane celebrates with friends and family after winning one of her three medals at the Paris Olympics last year (Image: Getty Images ) Article continues below We caught up with Finucane at Carmarthen Park last year, just weeks after she returned home from Paris with three Olympic medals around her neck. 'I remember, when I was seven years old, coming here with my brother and sister,' she said. 'We lived just across the road. I would go round and round the track on my little pink bike with tassels on it. That was it - I was hooked.' On her success, she said: 'It has changed my life. I'm still the same old Emma, but you are kind of in a bubble at the Olympics so you don't really see what's going on around you. "But then you come back home and I've been asked for pictures in Tesco a couple of times and people say: 'Ooh, I've seen you on the telly!' 'I love it. I love being home and coming back to see everyone. I'm very honoured to be asked to attend events. I don't come home often and to be recognised for what I've done at the Olympics is amazing. 'As athletes we obviously have our own ambitions in terms of winning but I want people to watch us and get on their bikes. I want to inspire people to get out there and cycle - it's a healthy way of life. Article continues below "Sport is amazing, it gives you energy, and I want to use my platform to help young girls and boys get into sprint cycling.'
Irish Independent
26-04-2025
- Lifestyle
- Irish Independent
Meet the 18-year-old Clare entrepreneur hopping head first into the pet sector
Still nibbling on the leftover chocolate bunnies after the bank holiday? Well, 18-year-old Leaving Certificate student Emma Finucane spends Easter and beyond hopping around the rabbit hutch. The Clare teen has recently taken her business 'Just Pets' online - where she creates specially crafted supplies boxes for rabbit owners, which look after the animals' needs for a full month. The boxes are offered as a subscription service or as one-off buys. On her site, she also offers accessories, such as beds, bottles, costumes, toys, and more.
BreakingNews.ie
22-04-2025
- Business
- BreakingNews.ie
Clare teenager taking pet sector by storm with rabbit feed subscription service
With Easter now in the rear view for most of us, Co Clare teenager, Emma Finucane, has to deal with little Easter bunnies all year round. Since setting up her fledgling business, Just Pets Ireland, last year, the 18-year-old has slowly but surely increased her sales of rabbit essentials' subscription boxes, even though she is in the throes of preparing for her Leaving Cert. Advertisement Having grown up on a small farm in Clare, Emma has always found ways to turn a pound from small farm projects. She has reared calves and lambs but turned her attention to breeding and selling pedigree lop-eared rabbits in April 2023, which led to people from all over Ireland travelling to Clare to buy her mild-mannered pet rabbits. 'Lop rabbits have been my most successful venture yet. Rabbits are easy to mind, and I have put a lot of effort into not just getting the right breed, but also rabbits with the right personality,' said Emma. Discussions with new and experienced pet rabbit owners, who she found were having issues purchasing rabbit feed and bedding exactly when the rabbits needed it, led to her decision to set up a subscription box service to simplify the care of rabbits. Advertisement The subscription box contains the essential things a rabbit needs every month - bedding, hay and feed - with a selection of rabbit care products and toys offered as optional extras. Her clients can subscribe for as long as they want and receive a monthly box delivered directly to their door. She has invested her own money in the venture, having saved money from jobs, sales of farm animals and her pet rabbits over the years. She now also sells additional rabbit care products, such as water bottles, beds and toys. While Emma is the sole owner of the venture, she gets a lot of practical help and support from her family. Her twin sister, Roisin, often helps her with both the packaging and deliveries of the boxes. Her father helped her set up her company and check out stock. Advertisement Emma Finucane, creator of Just Pets Ireland Her mother designed her website, where anyone can buy individual boxes or start a subscription. The boxes are delivered nationwide. The two sisters have helped out in both the family's and neighbours' farms, with house construction and renovation, and have done plumbing, tiling, and more. They both spent time in country fairs helping in a neighbour's stand, and this is where they learned the ins and outs of selling and getting customers. Hard work has been a natural part of growing up on a farm, even a small one. 'My parents have always made sure my sister and I have had a wide variety of experiences. They've always included us in any projects they have or encouraged us to work with others for wider experiences,' says Emma. Advertisement Seeing as Just Pets Ireland is an Irish company, Emma has as much as possible tried sourcing the items in the box in Ireland. The sawdust and hay are from Wicklow, but she has had to get the feed abroad, following the recommendations of a small animal vet specialised in rabbits. 'It took a lot of research to get and source the right products. Brexit, of course, made everything complicated by limiting the products, but as I always wanted to source as much as possible in Ireland, it was also not a huge problem,' she adds. Emma now has regular customers and subscribers who receive their monthly box. Advertisement Most of the business has come through her pet rabbit customers, but also through social media. She's hoping to expand further, but is also happy with slow progress as she needs to focus on her Leaving Cert this year. Ireland Irish group wins cheerleading world title in US Read More 'It does get stressful at times, and I can sometimes feel I don't have enough hours in the day for everything that needs to get done. I need to spend a lot of time on my studies in the coming months, but I'm lucky to have help from both family and neighbours. Emma's love of animals keeps her motivated. She explains: 'When you have animals, you cannot choose not to do your jobs. You must feed and care for them, rain or shine. You must be there even if it means being up at all hours or cancelling plans when they're sick', she says Emma is determined to get high points in Leaving Cert, as it's the key to unlocking her dream of studying business and IT in college and turning her passion into a career. She had initially wanted to study veterinary, but setting up Just Pets Ireland has given her a taste for entrepreneurship. Her goal is to follow her entrepreneurial streak and grow her business further.
The Independent
24-03-2025
- Sport
- The Independent
Track Champions League axed after four years in cycling calendar shake-up
Track cycling's flagship event, the Track Champions League, has been axed after four years in a surprise move by the sport's governing body, the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI), and its broadcaster Warner Bros. Discovery. The league was inaugurated in 2021 as an annual exhibition series of five fast-paced rounds taking place across Europe, with many of the world's top riders taking part in either endurance and sprint categories. The series made tweaks to the Olympic format of some disciplines with the intention of making track cycling appealing to a wider audience, and it drew in large crowds throughout the 2025 edition, with the final round - held at London's Lee Valley velodrome - sold out. The 2024 women's endurance category was won by Scotland's multiple Olympic and world champion Katie Archibald, with Brits Emma Finucane, Matthew Richardson, and Will Perrett all taking individual victories over the course of the series. Last year's edition had no victory ceremony as a crash brought the final round to an abrupt end, with Britain's Katy Marchant flying over the velodrome's protective barrier and suffering two arm fractures. A statement released on Monday said that the broadcaster WBD Sports would 'redefine its involvement in the promotion of track cycling,' with the decision spelling the end for the Track Champions League. The decision comes towards the beginning of a new Olympic cycle, with riders starting down the long road to the Los Angeles Games in 2028. At the same time, the UCI has announced a revamp of the Track Nations Cup, a season-long competition taking place over three rounds and itself a rebrand of the Track Cycling World Cup, which ran until 2021. This year there was only one round, in Konya, Turkey, earlier in March. The competition will be renamed the Track World Cup from 2026, with three rounds each season and points accrued throughout the series determining qualification for the annual World Championships and the Olympics. The decision appears to have been made to streamline the track calendar while maintaining TV coverage, with Warner Bros. Discovery to cover the renamed Track World Cup in place of the Track Champions League, as the UCI seeks to raise the profile of the series and track cycling as a sport. The shelving of the Track Champions League comes during a turbulent time for live coverage of cycling. to broadcast the Tour de France from 2026 means that this year's edition will be the last to have free-to-view coverage. Cycling more broadly has gone behind a more expensive paywall since the dissolution of Eurosport in the UK and move of Eurosport's content to TNT Sports - under the Warner Bros. umbrella - at the end of February, with viewers hit with a 344% price hike.
