A ham-fisted dispute between Belarusian athlete Krystsina Tsimanouskaya and team officials over whether she should run a relay at the Tokyo track has morphed into an international incident
A ham-fisted dispute between a Belarusian athlete and team officials over whether she should run a relay at the Tokyo track has morphed into an international incident, with the athlete in protective custody at an airport hotel and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees now involved.
Victor Lukashenko, the eldest son of the Belarus president, is the president of the Belarus National Olympic Committee, the organisation that sent two team officials to Tsimanouskaya’s room in the Olympic village on Sunday afternoon to escort her to the airport and load her on to a flight to Minsk.news site reported Tsimanouskaya as saying late on Sunday night. “I am not afraid that I will be fired or kicked out of the national command.
The IOC also does not recognise Victor Lukashenko as the head of Belarus’ NOC. Victor was given the title when his father, a former officer in the Soviet army, relinquished it earlier this year. Lukashenko’s personal interest and political investment in sport means that any Belarus officials sent to Tokyo to chaperone their athletes are likely to be cronies of the regime.
Belarus’ response was to engage in state-sanctioned gaslighting, with a statement released by the Belarus NOC claiming it had withdrawn Tsimanouskaya from competition because of her “emotional and psychological state.″ Kovalchuk is a career soldier who worked in the president’s personal security detail. When he was appointed to the sports post in March, Lukashenko told local media that he wanted to see greater discipline across the national sports system.“Think, see who to work with, build a system. But the main thing is that it lacks discipline. The coaching staff works disgustingly, with the exception of some.
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