Krystsina Tsimanouskaya a Belarusian sprinter. She won a silver medal in the 100 metres at the 2017 European U23 Championships.
She had an incident with her team on Sunday that caused a diplomatic distress when she said her coaches had cut her Tokyo Games short, demanding she pack her bags at the Olympic village and taking her to the airport against her wishes because she had publicly criticized them.
She refused to board the flight and sought the protection of Japanese police.” I will not return to Belarus,” as quoted by Reuters.
Tsimanouskaya had been scheduled to board a flight for Warsaw on Wednesday after Poland’s government offered her a humanitarian visa. Instead, she departed on an Austrian Airlines flight scheduled to land in Vienna at 4:05 p.m. local time (1405 GMT)
She will go to Poland in the evening, said a member of the Belarusian community in touch with Tsimanouskaya, who also said that diplomats had told her that they changed her flight due to security concerns. The source did not specify the concerns and Reuters could not independently verify them.
Poland’s deputy foreign minister Marcin Przydacz confirmed the athlete was still in the care of the Polish diplomatic services, but did not say where she would eventually land.
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