Finucane has also created history in her own country by becoming the most successful Welsh woman in Games history.<\/p>\n
The honour of representing Wales is important to her as Finucane normally competes for Great Britain in major events like the Olympics and world championships.<\/p>\n
Finucane revealed she has been inspired by a speech by her Welsh team-mate Lewis Oliva on what it meant to represent the nation.<\/p>\n
“I was crying my eyes out when I heard this,” said Finucane.<\/p>\n
“He said this was the reason we do what we do, because you are Welsh. <\/p>\n
“He ignited a fire in me. I was determined to ride for Wales and was going to do it with passion.”<\/p>\n
It worked as Finucane led a Welsh cycling medal charge in Glasgow with 11 podium positions.<\/p>\n
This included six gold, three silver and two bronze, the most successful Commonwealth return for the sport.<\/p>\n
Finucane has heard the Welsh anthem four times in successive days, once with two team-mates and three on her own.<\/p>\n
She was the most emotional for this final one as she came to terms with what she had achieved.<\/p>\n
“I was an absolute mess on the podium,” said Finucane.<\/p>\n
“I saw my family in front of me, the Welsh flag, and then all my team-mates also draped in the red flag.<\/p>\n
“Things like this happen once every four years and I wanted to stand on that top set, sing the anthem and live in the moment.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Finucane has also created history in her own country by becoming the most successful Welsh woman in Games…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":556754,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111,139,69,213],"class_list":["post-556753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=556753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556753\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/556754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=556753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=556753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=556753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}