Michelle Heimberg once hoped to see Paris for the first time while competing at the Olympics. One bad dive at the Swiss trials ended that ambition, setting her on a path that led away from the sport – and back again.

Two years after failing to earn a place at the Paris 2024 Games Heimberg has now booked that first visit to the French capital, where she will compete at this summer’s European Aquatics Championships as defending champion in the women’s 3m springboard.

“2024 was a challenging year,” she told European Aquatics. “We had the qualification in mid-February where I missed out on qualifying for the Olympics. My family were there and it was kind of devastating. It was like – ‘OK, so what should I do with my life now?’

“I had done everything heading to those Olympics. And one dive meant I missed them.

“It was really hard. So I asked myself: ‘Who am I and what should I do next?’ Because the dream was gone.

“It made me look at everything in my life. I had been doing everything for diving and I just realised it can’t be this way. Because if I define myself only as an athlete I end up with the really hard times I had after failing in the qualification.

“So that’s why I decided to take six months completely off from diving.

“In the first place it was just to recover from what happened but also I needed to know if I wanted to come back to diving, to give it everything I had. Because if I do something I want to do it 110 per cent and not just for fun – although having fun in sport is very important.

“In this time I really enjoyed myself, I suddenly had time for my friends, and I discovered who I am besides being a diver. I also discovered there are so many more things in life than diving. To be a diver is a real privilege in life, but it’s not everything.

“But in end I knew I wanted to come back because I hadn’t achieved everything I wanted at that point.

“When I got back I was really enjoying diving again. And I think that’s what helped in the 2025 season because I had seen diving again as a privilege and for the first time I was doing it for myself and no one else.

“I said, ‘OK, I’ll do it again, I’ll go for Los Angeles. But this time I’m going to do it for myself and no one else.

“Because, especially in Switzerland where we pay everything on our own – if our coach comes with us we have to pay for them too – it gets hard to still see you are doing it for yourself. You get sponsors, and sometimes you feel that you have to dive and perform because people believe in you and you have to do it for them.

“But you have to change it so that it is a case of people supporting you if they want to and because they see how much joy you have in what you do.

“This helped me a lot, having to switch my approach and saying: ‘OK, they support me because they want to and I don’t owe them anything. I do it for myself because I have fun doing it.’

“It was a gradual process for me, which I worked out with input from a sports psychologist. But that switch in approach helped me a lot in the 2025 season and also going onwards to Paris and Los Angeles.”

Now 25, Heimberg – who lives in a small village between Berne, where she trains, and Zurich – has been diving in earnest since she was 12 after an eight-year career as a gymnast had been ended by fractured kneecaps in 2011 and 2012. Sporting challenges clearly go with the territory as far as this athlete is concerned.

Within five years she had won her first major international medal, taking 3m springboard silver at the 2017 European Championships in Kyiv.

Since then she has collected seven more European medals, winning 1m gold and 3m bronze at the 2023 European Games and reversing those results at last year’s European Diving Championships in Antalya.

She also finished sixth in the 2022 world 3m final, a year after reaching the final at her first Olympics in Tokyo.

Not only has Heimberg altered her approach to diving, but she has also created a new work/sport balance in her life. Last September, after completing a degree in Communication Science at the University of Zurich, she began working part-time for her regional sports federation.

“I wanted something for my brain,” she said, “something else. Because I feel like if I’m too much into diving the whole time it’s hard. If you have a bad preparation you can find yourself going back home and questioning everything.

“But also I do it for the financial side – it calms a bit, because it is a regular monthly income. It’s also about preparing for the life after diving.”

Not surprisingly, Heimberg is heading for Paris with high hopes.

“I’m really looking forward to going to Paris because I missed it two years ago and now just to be able to go back and kind of write my own story with the place is something I am really looking forward to.

“At this point in my career I am really trying to enjoy the competitions because I know I won’t be diving until I am 40 years old. I know I probably have a couple of years still to go but I know it’s not going to last forever.

“it’s also a different approach going to the Europeans, knowing I can be confident because I know when it counted in the last year I was able to deliver at the Europeans.

“So I’m really looking forward to going to Paris, writing my own stories and enjoying the competitions and the pool there.

“For me it’s not scary to go and compete in the pool where I wanted o compete in the Olympics. Because it looks really different inside of me than it did in 2024.

“It’s going to be my first time in Paris and I’m going to stay for a couple of days longer after the competitions to discover the city.

“The Eiffel Tower is going to be a must. But apart from the obvious tourist spots I would really love to go strolling through the little shops and local markets and coffee shops. I want to soak up the flavour of Paris that everyone says exists.”

After her long and testing journey over the past two years, that stroll promises to be sweet indeed…

Mike Rowbottom for European Aquatics