SAINT-DENIS, France – Three years ago, Krystsina Tsimanouskaya’s Olympic Games ended in a dramatic impasse at a Tokyo airport, when Belarus national team officials tried to send her home against her will.
She’s back at Paris Olympics representing a new country and looking to resolve some unfinished business.
“My No. 1 goal was to 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 final race at the Paris Olympics, running the 4×100-meter relay. with the Polish national team.
A diplomatic incident broke out at the Tokyo Games when the Belarusian team sent Tsimanouskaya to the airport and she appealed to Japanese police for help. She criticized Belarusian coaches after they tried to force her to take part in the 4×400 meter relay, which she had never run before.
She was prevented from running her favorite race, the 200 meters, and said Belarusian authorities tried to get her to board a flight ahead of police at the airport. intervened to help her. Tsimanouskaya said at the time that she feared reprisals if she returned to Belarus and had been warned by her grandmother to stay away.
It was a year later President Alexander LukashenkoBelarus’ long-time authoritarian leader was re-elected in a vote widely seen by the opposition and Western countries as fraudulent. Protesters were met with violence from security forces and many opposition members were arrested or fled.
Tsimanouskaya received help to move to Poland, where she soon settled. Now competing for Poland, she ran her favorite 200 meters and the 4×100 relay in Paris.
Tsimanouskaya lost in the new repechage round of the 200 and missed the relay final by 0.22 seconds on Thursday, but says she wasn’t too disappointed.
Two Belarusian coaches lost their Olympic credentials due to the Tokyo incident and one of them, Yury Moisevich, was banned from any role in athletics for five years in February after a court found his actions constituted 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 discovered a love of painting. Her past in Belarus still follows her.
Tsimanouskaya said she received threats online and believed people tried to follow her when she left her home, something she reported to Polish authorities. In Paris, she said her new team warned her that her safety could be at risk.
There is no Belarusian 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, Kiev.
Seventeen Belarusian athletes are competing at the Paris Olympics as neutral individual athletes, together with 15 Russians. None are in athletics.
The IOC implemented rigorous vetting of neutrals, aiming to exclude those with ties to the military or security services, as well as anyone who publicly supported the war. Tsimanouskaya still finds it difficult to relax, even at the Olympics.
“Before coming here, representatives of the (Polish) team warned me that it was better to be careful and not leave the (Olympic) Village alone, because they are also worried that something might happen. And in Tokyo, for example, in the Belarusian team there were representatives of the KGB (security service),” 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 about myself right now.”
___
This story originally appeared on ABCNews.go.com read the full story
