Hannah Snellgrove – folk singer, Cambridge graduate and Paris 2024 sailing hopeful talks to Olympics.com

Bewildered to have been dropped from the highly-competitive British Sailing programme in 2014, Hannah Snellgrove re-grouped, taking on a number of jobs while she decided what to do next. Reporter for a local newspaper, sailing coach, gigging with her folk band Bimbling, and even going for a role with British security service, the MI5.

"But I didn't get in," Snellgrove told Olympics.com in an exclusive interview ahead of the Paris 2024 test event in Marseille, France taking place 7-16 July.

A pause.

"Or did I?"

Snellgrove grins displaying the humour that has seen her through a rollercoaster of a journey, which currently sees her back in the British Sailing fold and chasing a third try at competing at an Olympic Games.

Having come so close before – at London 2012 and Tokyo 2020 – the 33-year-old, as of her first day of competition in France on 9 July, knows the drill, but that doesn't make it any easier.

With only one place per gender per nation available in each discipline, and with Great Britain, "the most successful national Olympic sailing team of all time" as stated prominently on its website banner, Snellgrove has her work cut out to achieve her lifelong dream.

However, her life less ordinary has chiselled a characterful persona who follows her own path, wherever that may lead.

Road to London 2012

A passionate sailor from aged eight, despite coming from a family with no previous involvement in the sport, Snellgrove's first brush with life's challenging forces came aged 16 after contracting the Epstein Barr Virus – also known as mono – a debilitating fatigue-inducing illness. A gap year ensued to fully recover before resuming her sailing career.

Accepted onto the British Sailing programme in 2009 after a series of successful summer events, Snellgrove also secured a place at the prestigious Cambridge University – despite limited history of her family going on to higher education. "My parents are tree surgeons," she said.

On completing her first year in natural sciences, Snellgrove deferred a year in order to train for, and participate in, the London 2012 trials.

So close was the competition between British boats for the berth in Laser Radial class – a single-handed boat – at a home Games, that the qualification period was extended to the Perth ISAF Sailing World Championships in December 2011.

Snellgrove was the second British boat home, 14th overall, and also claimed the Marlow Ropes Award for the standout achievement of a GB development sailor. However, Alison Young secured seventh in Australia to take the hallowed place on the team, achieving a fifth place in front of a home crowd in Weymouth at the London 2012 Olympic Games.

Returning to university, and despite combining study with sailing, Snellgrove came away with a first-class degree, and a prize for best geology-based dissertation. The study of rocks seemingly ironic for a water-loving soul, but the kicker is, the project required six weeks on a tiny island, with five of her peers.

"I produced a geological map and report of the most northerly Shetland Island (in Scotland) called Unst and it was great.

"There were two spots on the island where we could get internet – one was outside the bus shelter and you would go there with your laptop once a week for the length of time that your laptop had battery, to answer all your emails."

Another experience bagged and the next opportunity for an Olympic Games spot would come in Brazil, in four years' time.

Or so Snellgrove thought.

Road to Rio 2016

In September 2014, six days after she finished 16th at the ISAF Sailing World Championships, a stunned Snellgrove lost her place in the British Sailing, which she "didn't really see coming".

Continuing competitive sailing unsupported for 12 months, the situation soon forced a reckoning.

"I had some good results but blew all my savings, then ran out of money and then stopped," said Snellgrove.

"It was a hard time because you were campaigning without the support of the bigger team behind you and, financially, obviously it's really hard," she told Olympics.com. "And then, when I did stop properly, it took me about six months to find my feet.

"I know for some people it's not that hard but for some people it takes even longer than that because you kind of lose all your identity when you stop being an athlete because it's not like a normal job.

"It's your hobby, but a lifestyle and all consuming. It dictates what you eat, when you sleep, your longer-term plans in terms of, you're definitely going to your world and Europeans every year and it doesn't matter if your cousin's wedding happens to clash with it. Like you're going to have to sacrifice certain things and that's hard.

"So, it's a very difficult process, the transitioning out of elite sport, and I'm pleased that there are better support processes in place for that now.

"But then I went on to have a really cool life for a few years, doing some different stuff."

Road to Tokyo 2020

More life experiences followed, including a rather surprising niche at the local newspaper, the New Milton Advertiser & Lymington Times, doing the obituaries.

"You go into somebody's house or somebody who's just lost one of the most important people in their lives and you listen to their story, and I always found that I was always very honoured to do obituaries, which sounds kind of strange.

"But I actually loved hearing people's life stories and often people would phone up afterwards and say how therapeutic it was to talk about the person they just lost."

Performing as one half of the folk duo Bimbling, in which Snellgrove plays the tin whistle and sings, became another passion but also an income earner and another part of her identity.

Coaching played another part, even training one of the sailors she's up against for that hot ticket to Paris – Matilda Nicholls, as a youngster.

But Snellgrove kept up with competitive sailing, and despite not doing it full time, still came up with some good results. But, more importantly, another big lesson was learned: "I think it took me a long time to realise that even if you don't go to the Olympics, you can still really enjoy the sport."

She tried her hand at sailing different types of boats too, and in 2017, was "peer-pressured into doing a couple of events". It was on this new path that Snellgrove met the then British Olympic laser radial coach, John Bertrand, an American Los Angeles 1984 Olympic silver medallist, who encouraged her to pursue full-time sailing again.

Snellgrove launched a crowdfunding campaign to buy a boat for Tokyo 2020, with the target of £6,000 surpassed to £7,000 within three weeks. Donations arrived from the divergent areas of her life – her local sailing club, the newspaper, her music fans – but also from a more surprising source, "the parents of competitors I coached, which was really lovely".

The next Olympic campaign was on.

Good results followed in 2018, and then re-selection to the British team. The 2019 season saw a seventh-place finish at the World Championships, matching the result at the Enoshima World Cup, at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic venue.

But the competitiveness of the British team saw Young again claim the spot and come away from the Japan Games with a 10th place in the hotly contested discipline.

Paris 2024?

So, to Paris. Or more precisely Marseille, where the Olympic sailing regatta will take place from 28 July - 8 August.

As Olympics.com was speaking to Snellgrove, she was sat in what would be the British team hotel in 13 months' time when the Paris 2024 Games gets underway. The test event enables organisers to iron out issues, but sailors also get a feel for the course, the atmosphere, and the facilities in a replica of the competition itself, with only one athlete per nation per discipline involved.

The first chance for nations to qualify a quota spot for Paris comes at the World Championships in the Netherlands, from 10-20 August 2023, with GB anticipating securing a quota spot in The Hague. Once that spot is locked in, it is then up to the selectors to choose the in-form athlete ahead of the Games.

So Snellgrove's journey continues, with a laser-focused goal in mind. But the biggest lesson she's learned on her convoluted pathway so far is never far from her thoughts.

"Being dropped from the team definitely taught me that I never wanted to be a sailor called Hannah again. I wanted to be Hannah who sails."

• How to qualify for sailing at Paris 2024