An Olympic fencer describes what it's like to train for the Tokyo games that may never come

• In March 2020, the International Olympics Committee announced the games would be postponed to 2021.
• The rescheduled games gave athletes an extra year to train, and worry about the status of the event.
• Champion fencer Ysaora Thibus kept training and decided not to waste precious time on doubts.

Ysaora Thibus had the makings of being a top athlete in the world from a young age.

"I realized really quickly that I loved to win," Thibus told Insider. "Every time I was going to competitions I was really going there to win. When I was losing, I was crying."

The champion fencer grew up in the small island group of Guadeloupe, a French overseas region in the southern Caribbean Sea.

Growing up, her fencing club was her home and her teammates were like her family, she said. When she started fencing as a child, she didn't initially grasp how far the sport could take her, but it didn't take long for her to recognize the fierce competitor she was.

At 17 she left her friends, family, and island for a new life in France; one dedicated to high-level practices, competitive training, and lofty goals.

"I thought yes, I want to go to the Olympic Games, I want to win the World Championships," Thibus said.

She set her mind on competing at one of the most prestigious athletic events in the world, and so she did just that. Twice. But medals eluded her both times, so she set her sights on Tokyo 2020.

But the Summer 2020 Olympics was yet one more casualty of the COVID-19 era.

Now, Thibus waits, with thousands of other Olympics-bound athletes, and she trains for games that may never come.

Thibus has past experiences to draw on as she continues to prepare for Tokyo

Thibus, now 29, first attended the London Olympics in 2012.

She was 18 and had no expectation of attending the event at the start of the year, she said. She was added to the French National team as a "shake-up." The coaches, she said, wanted to try something new - a younger girl.

Thibus joined and the team started winning. At the last qualifying event of the season, Thibus and her team qualified for the Olympics.

"It was a victory for us to be part of these Olympic Games," she said. "It was my first and I had no idea how it would look like, but it was a really great experience."

When she attended again, four years later in Rio, she was one of the top fencers in the world, she said, and things were different.

"I really had a lot of goals," she said. "I really wanted to medal."

She placed 5th individually.

"It was really close," Thibus said.

But those games taught her a vital lesson, she said: Failure is not necessarily bad.

Thibus turned her attention to Tokyo 2020, but the pandemic put the games on hold

Following her second Olympic Games, Thibus made some changes. She started training with a new system. She hired her own coaches. She trained in Los Angeles, New York, and Paris.

She was three-and-a-half months away from the event for which she'd been training four years.

Then, COVID-19 struck. International travel ceased as the virus rapidly began to chip away at normalcy. The whole world was thrust into uncertainty, fear, and chaos.

On March 24, 2020, the International Olympics Committee announced the 2020 games would be rescheduled for Summer 2021.

"I cried," Thibus said when she found out. "At the same time, I was relieved. That would have been crazy to go like that."

She was lost for a while following the announcement, in the US, far from her home.

Thibus said she needed to ground herself. She asked herself difficult questions: Who am I if I can't train? Who am I if I can't compete? How can I adapt to the situation?

"And then you figure it out," she said. "You just try to push yourself to find positivity in the situation...I changed the way I was training to find ways to keep going."

The rescheduled games meant an extra year to train - but they also brought ongoing uncertainty

When the games were rescheduled last year, few imagined the event would still be in jeopardy nearly 365 days later, but their status remains in flux five months before they are set to start.

Conflicting reports in recent weeks haven't helped clarify much. Tokyo officials say they're determined to host the games, and IOC president Thomas Bach insisted earlier this month that the event was going ahead. But rumors of cancellation and Japanese people's stark opposition to the games signal remaining doubt around the event.

For athletes, the constant unknowns are challenging.

"You have this uncertainty where you don't know if you're going to have competition, you don't know when it's going to start again," Thibus said. "You don't know why you're training, and you also have to push yourself physically and mentally one more year, so it's difficult."

But Thibus decided she couldn't keep waiting for answers that might never come, and she reframed her perspective.

"About the games, I just decided...that I think that they are going to happen," she said. "We are six months ahead - less than six months - so we cannot lose time on doubting. It's a really big loss of energy."

The Olympics are particularly important for fencing, Thibus said. The sport doesn't have the same quality of events in between, and participating in the Olympics "changes everything" for the fencers who compete there.

"I decided no matter, I'm going to try and fence in these Olympic Games, and if they don't happen, they don't happen."

Having other interests helps Thibus manage the uncertainty of these games

For Thibus, fencing is, of course, an important part of her life - but it's not her whole life, and she likes it that way.

She loves fashion and travel. She found time to graduate from business school in Paris, and last year, she started EssentiElle, a media platform for female athletes to share stories about their challenges and victories.

"We are in a really masculine world [in sports], so I really wanted to do my part," Thibus said.

She's passionate about advocating for more female voices and decision-makers in athletics and said she has more women-centric projects in the works.

As she continues training for Tokyo, she's been reflecting on her second Olympics experience in which she was laser-focused on winning a medal.

"This time it's different," Thibus said about heading into her third games. "I also want to build a family, keep traveling, maybe move to New York, so it's not like I need to have a medal, and if I don't...I didn't achieve something."