Micky Beckett worked in TV production in Tokyo but in Paris, he'll be writing his own scripts.
The Welshman will make a long-awaited Olympic debut next summer, one of a group of 10 sailors who are the first athletes to be selected by Team GB for the Games.
A self-confessed obsessive of his sport, the ILCA 7 star got a call to go to Tokyo but not the one he'd dreamed of.
"I wasn't selected for the Olympics but I got a call from someone in the production team to say they needed somebody who understood sailing to be what's called a live production spotter," said the 28-year-old.
"I would sit next to the director and advise them on the narrative of the race. Which bits of the race are worth looking at and where the helicopters should be.
đź“Ť Next stop: @Paris2024
— Team GB (@TeamGB) October 11, 2023
🚆 Departing: July 2024
Introducing our ten-strong sailing team, the first athletes officially on the Team GB team sheet for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games
@BritishSailing
"It was an amazing experience and really interesting to go to the Olympics. I knew a lot of the people out there racing and it was a fantastic way to see an event up close.
"But I remember the director actually said to me afterwards: 'it's been good having you here working with us, but make sure actually competing next time the Olympics happens'.
"Beckett made sure all right, qualifying Team GB a quota place that he will take up in 2024.
He is one of over 1,000 elite athletes on UK Sport’s National Lottery-funded World Class Programme, allowing them to train full time, have access to the world’s best coaches and benefit from pioneering medical support – this is vital for their pathway to the Paris 2024 Games.
With a father who worked as a sailing instructor and boat builder, Beckett was born to be on the water, first learning the ropes on his dad's hand-made boat at just five-years-old.
He joined the British Sailing team since 2013 and it took him a decade to make the Olympic team, missing out on selection to Tokyo by the barest of margins.
"I learnt to sail when I was five and spent my whole life trying to get to the Olympics," he said.
"I've had three attempts at trying to qualify, the first one I was nowhere close, the second one I finished second at British trials, and the third time, well here we are. To finally make it, it's quite hard to articulate really."
Beckett's tale of the tape tells a story of a rock-solid performer, winning either gold or silver in the last seven international competitions.
There are only two outliers - 13th and 18th at the World Championships in 2021 and 2022 respectively. Beckett delved deep to understand why he wasn't able to peak at the right time and the answer was an uncomfortable one.
"Last year, I went non-stop from January to May and during that time, I barely had one or two days off," he said.
"It's a strange experience. When you've got a cold or a hangover, there's a tangible symptom that's telling you what's wrong.
"When you've overtrained, you don't have that sense of perspective, you feel the same way as you did the day before. But over the space of months, you've just gradually declined in your mental acuteness, sharpness and energy to get stuff done and it's imperceptible.
"It's a tough thing that every athlete has to deal with at some point and you just have to learn the lesson."
This year, Beckett's timing had to be perfect.
He had to peak in August for the Olympic Test Event in Marseille and the World Championships, the crucial qualification regatta.
"The pinnacle of our sport is the Olympics but if you don't qualify it's the World Championships,” he said.
“And it was always the one event I managed to mess up.
"Every single year I would underperform, and it was getting worse every time.
"But this year, I was leading the fleet towards the closing stages and was really thinking it was working for me. I felt good and confident. Unfortunately, I didn't quite get it right in the last few days but still came second which was brilliant."
Beckett was the runaway leader in both of those regattas but twice emerged with silver.
On both occasions, he was outlasted by Australia's Olympic champion Matt Wearn, who ran away with the medal race in Marseille and took the lead in the final race of the opening series in the Hague.
"When you're sailing well, you feel unstoppable," said Beckett.
"You're stood on this platform looking down thinking, 'how was I ever not able to do this?'
"Then you fall off that platform and you're stood on the ground with everyone else thinking, 'how did I ever get up there, and how can I ever get back?' In this sport, you fall hard and fast."
Beckett's ILCA 7 is a small single handed dinghy, one of the most popular boats in the world, due to its simplicity.
The oldest Olympic sailing class after the demise of the Finn, for heavyweight men, the boat was designed 50 years ago and has barely changed since. In fact, at the Olympics, ILCA sailors don't even bring their own boat, they have a standardised shell provided for them.
"This thing is an absolute dinosaur," said Beckett.
"Some of the other Olympic classes didn't exist five years ago.
"You can't change a single thing, no tweaking, no modifying, no research and development budget. Nothing. If you bought a boat and went to a race, it would be exactly the same one I was using - then we go out and race.
"It's a test of fitness, strength and skill. 150 identical boats. The ultimate test, the purest test in sailing. I wouldn't do anything else."
This is as animated as you'll get the softly-spoken Pembrokeshire native, whose devotion to his craft is impossible not to admire.
The hope is that his rivals do the same next summer.
"This qualification is so many years of thinking that I'm probably not cut out for this and then it eventually working out," said Beckett.
"One of my earliest memories of the Games is my mum waking me up during the Beijing Olympics to watch an incredible 49er race at three o'clock in the morning. To now be going to compete there is pretty special."
Sportsbeat 2023