Sprinter recruited by spies, Belarus says
MOSCOW • Belarusian officials told the parents of one of their Olympic athletes Monday that she had been recruited by foreign spies, after she escaped a forced expulsion from the Tokyo Games.
Krystsina Tsimanouskaya, 24, has been granted a Polish humanitarian visa and is expected to stay at the Polish embassy until she departs Japan on Wednesday.
The sprinter sought police protection on Sunday after claiming Belarusian sports officials tried to deport her for criticizing the national team, in the latest scandal involving the increasingly totalitarian regime of President Alexander Lukashenko.
The officials took her from her hotel at the Olympic Village to Tokyo airport, where she alerted the authorities.
The Belarusian Sports Solidarity Fund, a group of opposition-supporting athletes, said Monday that Tsimanouskaya’s mother had been contacted by the Belarusian Olympic committee.
Officials told her that her daughter had “been recruited by foreign intelligence and has to come back home immediately,” the group said.
Tsimanouskaya was supposed to compete in Monday’s 200 metre heats, but instead became the subject of diplomatic wrangling.
She told Belarusian media on Sunday that she was afraid of going back home, fearing that she might be jailed for her remarks.
Marcin Przydacz, Poland’s deputy foreign minister, said the country would do “whatever is necessary” to help the sprinter continue her career. She will be able to apply for asylum once she is in the country.
Arseniy Zdanevich, her husband, is in Ukraine. Tsimanouskaya was kicked off the team over the weekend after she posted a video criticizing a last-minute decision to put her in the 4x400m relay — an event she had never raced in.
A leaked recording of a conversation between Tsimanouskaya and two Belarusian officials suggested they pressured her into pulling out of the 200m race over her comments.