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Many elite athletes who spoke against their autocratic leader must watch on the sidelines while those who stayed quiet or showed loyalty compete in Paris.
Aug. 9, 2024, 7:10 a.m. ET
The Belarusian-born sprinter Kristina Timanovskaya set off the biggest political crisis of the Tokyo Games after her delegation tried to forcibly send her home for publicly complaining that the head coach had signed her up for the wrong Olympic event.
Three years later, she has left behind Belarus and its sporting community — whose leadership mirrors the wider repression in the country — and finally been able to compete in the Olympic events she had been training for over her whole career, the 100- and 200-meter dashes, for her new home, Poland.
“As soon as I arrived in Poland, I had no other goal but competing in the Paris Olympics,” she said in an interview in the Olympic Village. “It was so important for me to go and run my own distance.”
Ms. Timanovskaya, whose name is also transliterated as Krystsina Tsimanouskaya, is one of the few lucky ones. Only one other Belarusian athlete, the high jumper Maryia Zhodzik, was able to change her citizenship to compete for Poland.
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Many others who dared to speak out against the leader of Belarus’s autocratic government can only watch on the sidelines while Belarusian athletes who stayed quiet or showed loyalty to the president compete in Paris.
