[5] In January 2020, she fought her first international match in a Kazakh training camp, which she lost and later said showed her she needed to gain more experience.
Upon returning home, she went back to the hospital to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan, maintaining her training, now in a socially distanced manner, while working day and night shifts as a nurse.
[5] Her previous losses led the Japanese boxing officials to deem her too inexperienced to send to the final qualifiers in Paris, but the postponement of the Games to 2021 gave her more time, an opportunity she embraced.
However, due to the pandemic, the International Olympic Committee cancelled the qualifiers and shifted to a world-ranking based method to allocate spots, which disqualified Tsubata.
[4] In the opening ceremony, Tsubata came into the public eye for her role in the show as a lone athlete exercising on a treadmill, representing the perseverance of Olympians, sportspeople and others as they were isolated by the pandemic.