Moscow (AFP)

Belarusian athlete Krystsina Tsimanouskaya was unknown when she arrived at the Tokyo Olympics.

Until she accused the sports authorities of her country of wanting to repatriate her by force to Belarus, an authoritarian state that did not tolerate any dissent.

The 24-year-old sprinter was scheduled to run in the women's 200m on Monday.

But she said she was forced on Sunday to give up her participation in the Olympics by her coach and accompanied to the airport by officials of the Belarusian National Olympic Committee to bring her back to Minsk.

His fault?

Having criticized his athletics federation a few days earlier.

The latter, failing to have effectively organized adequate doping controls, had to give up aligning certain athletes scheduled for the event.

But forced Tsimanouskaya to participate - without warning her upstream - in order to make up for the absences as a matter of urgency.

"I would never have reacted so harshly if they had come to see me ahead of time, explained the situation to me and asked me if I was ready to run the 400m. But they did everything behind my back. ", she explained on Instagram.

The criticism has not passed, and Belarusian officials have ordered Krystsina Tsimanouskaya to return home, according to the sprinter.

On Sunday, she told the media by.tribuna.com that she was "afraid" of ending up in prison in Belarus and had asked the Japanese police and the IOC for help to avoid boarding.

Because in Belarus, opposing the authorities, even sports, is not tolerated.

The country has been the scene for almost a year of merciless political repression.

Thousands of critics of President Alexander Lukashenko's regime are in prison or in exile.

Including athletes.

And the Belarusian Olympic committee is headed by Viktor Lukashenko, son of the president head of state.

This organization has also swept the explanations of the sportswoman, assuring that she had been excluded from the Olympics on "decision of the doctors, because of her emotional and psychological state".

A "lie", according to the athlete.

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What began as a sporting dispute quickly took a political turn, given the tense context in Belarus.

Alexander Lukashenko faced in the summer and fall of 2020 a historic protest movement against his re-election that he is trying to put down by relentlessly repressing opponents, journalists and activists.

- "Think about it before you go" -

But beyond that, willingly getting involved in everything, he threatened the sports delegations leaving for Tokyo just before the Olympics.

"Think about it before you go. If you come back empty-handed, it is better not to come back at all" to Belarus, he blurted out.

Svetlana Tikhanovskaïa, leader of the Belarusian opposition, for her part thanked Sunday evening "the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Poland for having offered asylum" to the sprinter.

Her husband Arkady Zdanevich told AFP on Monday that he had fled his country for neighboring Ukraine in the wake of the scandal.

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Unknown to the general public until now, Tsimanouskaya was born in 1996, and was champion of Belarus in the 100 and 200 m in 2016.

On Instagram, she shares images of her workouts and meals, indicating that she overcame an eating disorder.

But the young woman hardly talks about politics there.

During the 2020 wave of protest against Alexander Lukashenko, she however signed an open letter with some 200 athletes denouncing the violence of the police against anti-power demonstrators.

She is originally from the town of Klilmovichi, near the Russian border, and graduated from the Belarusian State Pedagogical University.

Many voices were raised in support of Krystsina Tsimanouskaya.

But in the Russian or Belarusian state media, the criticisms have been harsh.

"How on the territory of a third country can someone be forcibly taken? She was simply offered to return to Belarus, as she does not fulfill the demands of the national team. This is the coach's right, "political commentator Alexander Chpakovsky said in the official Sovetskaya Belorussia newspaper, suggesting that she" took advantage "of the situation to seek asylum.

© 2021 AFP