Paris Games come with promise of a French renaissance for the Olympic, Paralympic movement

The life of a high performance athlete is always filled with unknowns.

It is part of the gig, trying to navigate daily training, always searching for that extra edge to peak for competitions. And in a many cases, it rarely ever goes as planned.

To be an athlete who has any level of success requires an immense amount of patience and trust in the process, as cliche as that may sound. Because there will be losses, there will be challenges and there will be things an athlete would have never predicted.

But all of those unknowns, that shifting landscape, ratcheted to an entirely different level three years ago in the lead up to the Tokyo Olympics. At the 100-days out mark, Canadian Olympians and Paralympians were locked down like everyone else in the midst of the incessant pandemic.

There was panic and fear the Games in Tokyo, without spectators, would even happen. But the athletes pushed on in the face of that unknown.

Maggie Mac Neil was one of those athletes who had to get creative with her training. She turned to a backyard pool in London, Ont., to prepare for her first Games. It was not how she imagined her first experience.

And yet, Mac Neil persevered. She captured Canada's first medal at the Olympics in Tokyo in a stunning closing 50 metres to become champion in the 100-metre butterfly.

Mac Neil doesn't really want to reflect too much on what the lead up to Tokyo was like — despite winning gold, there was a toll to it all.

"We're in a really different place than before Tokyo with all the limited racing and training," she said.

"I don't know how much I want to compare myself to three years ago because I feel I've done so much since then."

Back then feels like yesterday and yet also seems like a lifetime ago for many of the athletes.

But as if overnight, another Games is coming.

Canadian wheelchair rugby player Zak Maddell, who is preparing for his fourth Paralympics after helping the Canadian team qualify just last month, says it was especially hard for the team to prepare for Tokyo.

They were hardly able to come together to train ahead of those Games.