In Japan, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, together with the International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach, has finally agreed to postpone the summer games until 2021.

Almost a year ago now, athletes around the world learned that the 32nd summer Olympics would be getting postponed by a full year. It was the first time in history.

The delay has given the International Olympic Committee more time to explore ways to safely bring thousands of athletes together in Tokyo.

And as vaccination rollouts continue around the world, there is hope that some countries may be able to vaccinate athletes in time for the games.

But for many athletes who had originally hoped to be competing in the games, navigating this additional year has been incredibly challenging.

They've had to find the motivation to simply continue with their grueling training sessions.

Many have also had to figure out new ways to train, as COVID restrictions forced most professional sports facilities to close down and also limited the ability to hold meats in Olympic qualifying competitions.

On today's episode, my colleague, George Ramsey, CNN Digital Sports Producer, brings us the story of one couple, both Tokyo Olympic hopefuls and their sacrifices and their struggles to train during this pandemic.

I'm Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN's Chief Medical Correspondent, and this is coronavirus, fact versus fiction.

It was hard to absorb, but still is. It's just felt like we've been sitting in a purgatory for a whole year now.

For Sandy Morris and her husband Tyrone Smith, uncertainty has surrounded the future of their careers ever since the 2020 Olympics got postponed.

March felt pretty hopeless. We just didn't know what was going to happen. And when you're an inch away from all of your aspirations being taken away from you and the games maybe even being completely canceled, it's heartbreaking.

So I'm just super happy that they didn't cancel them, that they postponed them, and they're going to happen this summer. I know they are.

Sandy is an American polevolta who won the Silver Medal in the 2016 Olympics in Rio. Her husband Tyrone was also there competing for Pimuta in the long jump.

We have a picture of together from the Rio Olympics opening ceremony, and I was wanting to have that same picture, you know, and to have an Olympics with my wife to have those memories that we can build together and hold on to.

Our story is very embedded in the Olympics. In Rio is really where we got to know each other and spend time together, and I would go as far as to say we fell in love in Rio.

And so it really would be a fairy tale story to get a second Olympics together as a married couple.

But the postponement of the Olympics nearly ended that dream. Tyrone is a bit older than Sandy, and no longer at the peak age for his sport.

He's also in business school pursuing an MBA, so he planned to retire from the professional circuit after the 2020 Games.

I had been building everything towards this last rar, making the sacrifices in a time in my life where the sacrifices were harder because again I was pursuing my post athletic career in school and everything.

So yeah, it took some soul searching to decide, am I able to continue to do this for the year.

I needed a moment to kind of process, to be sad, to be upset, and then to put it behind me and continue to put one foot in front of the other and train towards it.

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