The long years of hard work, tears and sacrifices were worth it for Emily Sarsfield as she recorded Great Britain's best-ever Olympic ski cross result.

The Durham freestyle skier reached the quarter-finals in PyeongChang, surpassing Sarah Sauvey's 34th place from Vancouver 2010.

Sarsfield missed out on being in contention for those Games after suffering a potentially career-ending knee injury at the test event in Canada the year previous.

She also failed to make the grade for Team GB at Sochi 2014 and she underwent further knee surgery in the run up to the 2015 season.

All the while the 34-year-old was balancing multiple jobs to be able to fund her Olympic dream, including setting up her own ski school in Meribel, France, where she teaches people of all ages from three year olds to pensioners.

But her determined persistent paid off in South Korea as she reached the last 16 of the women's competition.

"To be here at this event is huge for me and to be racing against these amazing girls is super cool. It meant a huge amount to me today,” she said.

“I've been doing this 12 years and I've been solo for 11 and a half of those. I've funded it. I set up a ski school and worked multiple jobs in the summer. I've taken a different route to a lot of my peers. But I think that just makes me a little bit hungrier.

“With ski cross it is such a nice close knit family. Everyone looks after you. Everyone looked after the little Brit. There was always someone I could turn to for tips and things.

“British Ski and Snowboard employed a coach six months ago and he is here with me. But the rest of the time “I basically learned this sport by following girls, copying them, watching what they were doing on video and just gave it a shot myself.”

Sarsfield admits she lives by the philosophy of shoot for the moon, even if you miss you will land amongst the stars.

The self-taught ski cross athlete was 22nd in Thursday's seeding round, leaving her a tough last-24 knockout race alongside France's Alizee Baron and India Sherret of Canada.

But her luck was in as Sherret crashed on the way down the course, leaving the Brit to qualify for the quarter-finals in second place.

That was as far as she would go though as she came fourth in the last 16 race, behind eventual Canadian silver medallist Brittany Phelan.

And Sarsfield conceded a poor start had prevented her from having a chance of being more in the mix in her race.

"Conditions were a bit different to training and the seeding run because we had ten centimetres of fresh snow and that can really affect our speed,” she added.

"We had to throw all our training out the window and learn some new tactics and we were doing different things on the track to what we had in training.

"The one thing I’m known for is a strong start but I think I tried a bit too hard there I think. The start is a little nerve-wracking with a three metre drop.

"You can't actually see where you're going to touch the snow. Every time I go down a ski cross course I'm scared. If you're not, you're not human.”

Don’t miss a moment of the Olympic Winter Games at Eurosport.co.uk and the Eurosport app