Vienna (AFP)
The plane of the Belarusian Olympic sprinter Krystsina Tsimanouskaya, who refused to return to her country for fear for her safety, landed at Vienna airport on Wednesday, a priori a simple stopover on the road to Poland which granted her a humanitarian visa.
The Austrian Airlines aircraft, which had taken off earlier from Tokyo, landed on the tarmac shortly after 3:00 p.m. local time (1:00 p.m. GMT), an AFP journalist noted.
A black VIP vehicle, followed by two police cars, awaited the 24-year-old athlete to escort him out of sight, while many media were present on the scene.
The young woman, in conflict with the sports authorities of her country, was initially to take a direct flight Tokyo-Warsaw operated by the Polish company LOT.
But she changed her route at the last minute.
"According to the information available to us, she is scheduled to return to Warsaw this evening," after this short stopover in Austria, a spokesman for the Austrian Foreign Ministry told AFP.
The sprinter claimed Sunday to have escaped forced repatriation to Belarus, a few days after openly criticizing the athletics federation of her country in the middle of the Tokyo Olympics.
At first, a possible welcome by Austria had been mentioned, a neutral country where its coach Philipp Unfried is from.
Belarusian athlete Krystsina Tsimanouskaya during the women's 100m series at the Tokyo Olympics, July 30, 2021 Giuseppe CACACE AFP / Archives
But Austria, one of the main economic partners of Belarus, where four of its major groups are located, was initially on the reserve.
On Wednesday, the Foreign Ministry however indicated that Krystsina Tsimanouskaya could "of course count on the support of Vienna if she wished to submit an asylum application".
"The decision is up to him," he said.
© 2021 AFP