Belarus Olympic sprinter who was in an airport standoff in Tokyo finds a new life running for Poland

SAINT-DENIS, France (AP) — Three years ago, Krystsina Tsimanouskaya’s Olympics ended in a dramatic standoff at a Tokyo airport when officials from the Belarus team tried to send her home against her will.

She’s back at the Paris Olympics representing a new country and looking to settle some unfinished business.

“My No. 1 aim was go out there and run exactly that event that I wasn’t able to run in Tokyo,” Tsimanouskaya told The Associated Press on Thursday after completing her last race of the Paris Olympics, running the 4x100-meter relay with the Poland team.

A diplomatic incident erupted at the Tokyo Games when the Belarus team sent Tsimanouskaya to the airport and she appealed to Japanese police for help. She had criticized Belarus’ coaches after they tried to force her to enter the 4x400-meter relay, which she had never raced before.

She was barred from running her preferred race, the 200, and said that Belarusian officials tried to make her board a flight before the police at the airport intervened to help her. Tsimanouskaya said at the time she feared reprisals if she returned to Belarus and had been warned by her grandmother to stay away.

It was a year after President Alexander Lukashenko, Belarus’ longtime authoritarian leader, had been re-elected in balloting widely seen by the opposition and Western countries as rigged. Protesters were met with violence from the security forces and many opposition members were either imprisoned or fled.

Tsimanouskaya received help to relocate to Poland, where she soon settled in. Now competing for Poland, she ran her preferred 200 and the 4x100 relay in Paris.

Tsimanouskaya lost in the new repechage round of the 200 and missed the relay final by .22 seconds Thursday, but says she wasn’t too disappointed.

Two Belarusian coaches were stripped of their Olympic credentials over the Tokyo incident and one, Yury Moisevich, was banned from any role in track and field for five years in February after a tribunal ruled his actions were an abuse of power.

Tsimanouskaya speaks fluent Polish and says she feels accepted in Warsaw, where she works as a personal trainer and influencer and has discovered a love of painting. Her past in Belarus still follows her.

Tsimanouskaya said she has received online threats, and that she believed people had tried to follow her when she left the house, something she reported to the Polish authorities. In Paris, she said her new team warned her safety could be at risk.

There is no Belarus Olympic team in Paris because the International Olympic Committee barred the country along with its close ally Russia following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Russian troops used Belarusian territory to launch their initial attack on the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv.

Seventeen Belarusian athletes are competing at the Paris Olympics as Individual Neutral Athletes, along with 15 Russians. None are in track and field.

The IOC implemented strict vetting for the neutrals aimed at barring those with links to the military or security services, as well as any who supported the war publicly. Tsimanouskaya still finds it hard to relax, even at the Olympics.

“Before coming here, representatives of the (Polish) team warned me I’d better be on my guard and not leave the (Olympic) Village alone, because they too are worried that something could happen. And in Tokyo, for example, on the Belarus team there were KGB (security service) representatives,” she said.

“So I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some strange people even among these neutrals. And that’s why, just because of that, I’m still a little worried for myself even now.”

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