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tokyo 2020 olympics

Court denies Belarus sprinter's legal bid to run in Olympics

34 Comments
By GRAHAM DUNBAR

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34 Comments
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Best of luck Tsimanouskaya and wishing you a positive bright future!

(Not sarcasm :-))

16 ( +28 / -12 )

troublemaker if u ask me

-50 ( +15 / -65 )

She fell out with the coaches and this is headline news for 3 days already?

-9 ( +12 / -21 )

Tsimanouskaya has been vilified in the autocratic country for using social media to criticize Belarusian track officials in Tokyo. She said they entered her in the 4x400 relay team, a distance she does not run, without her consent.

Disagree with coaches and your life is in danger?

21 ( +23 / -2 )

Good luck to her, she is alas not the first or only person to be threatened and oppressed by that brutal regime.

24 ( +29 / -5 )

Her parents warned her not to return home. Yesterday in Belarus an activist went out for his daily run but never returned. Later his body was discovered.

Yeah, he went for a run in middle of the far-right US-German client regime of Ukraine and was later found

hanged. The regime which won't allow any opposition party which calls for close ties to Russia despiute the fact opinion polls show the clear majority of the population wants that. And now in the Western media this criminal state is a beacon of "freedom and democracy".

-13 ( +6 / -19 )

Good for her that she didn’t seek asylum in Japan.

If I were to escape from any dictatorship like Belorussia I would also seek help from one of the more free and open minded EU countries.

Good from Poland as well.

18 ( +20 / -2 )

She won’t have much difficulty adapting to her new home. Belarusian and Polish are both Slavic languages and quite close to each other. Good luck !

11 ( +12 / -1 )

Coincidentally, my daughter is home now, so I mentioned this story with a bit of family history: Danish Mennonites, my family fled Napoleon to Ukraine, and when things started to look iffy there, to the US. Ukraine is what I call a "border state" - that sadly sandwiched between two major cultures. You don't want to be from there.

10 ( +10 / -0 )

The Olympics have long had very unhealthy ties to governments promoting self-serving nationalistic sentiment. The case of  Tsimanouskaya is another reminder that government influence needs to be curbed and individualism in sport given priority in a future revamped model of the games that restores freedom and dignity to athletes.

9 ( +10 / -1 )

Are you guys ignorant??? She would most likely be jailed or worse if she returned to Belarus because of her criticism of the government. Just look at the story of the opposition Belarus activist who was found dead in ukraine today. She did the right thing.

17 ( +22 / -5 )

@Matej

i’ve tried to understand your comment but really can’t understand what you want to say! I assume your using devushka in the Russian sense but after that I’m lost. It almost certainly seems I completely disagree with you but would like to understand what your trying, and failing, to say before I do.

Could you try again, perhaps with the help of a friend that speaks English?

15 ( +16 / -1 )

i’ve tried to understand your comment but really can’t understand what you want to say! 

The second paragraph is pretty clear, though.

she is disgrace for own national olympic team as well as fo her home country...no sympathy...at all...

Considering her country is basically an outlaw nation, run by a brutal thug of a dictator, she should be proud of her bravery in standing up to her bullying coaches and their mafia boss.

16 ( +17 / -1 )

garypen

Yes, I can certainly agree with that!!

10 ( +10 / -0 )

Glad to know that Poland will keep her safe from the THUGS in her homeland.

10 ( +11 / -1 )

Funny thing is that she was loyal to the regime (unlike many other Belarusian sportsmen who publicly raised their voice against dictatorship). But the system tried to bulldoze her as soon as she opposed to purely sport-related matters and it became a news trend.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

The Court of Arbitration for Sport 

anything on what entity that is?

0 ( +0 / -0 )

The CAS prevents her from participating but the whole Russian loophole team is OK?

5 ( +7 / -2 )

First she doesn't want to run, then she doesn't want to return to her country, she accepts a Polish visa, now wants to run for Belarus. Weird

She's always wanted to run for Belarus - but in her 200m race discipline she trained for

They didn't even ask her if she can run the 400m when they put her on the 400m race behind her back (when what the team should've done instead is ask a longer distance runner to go down to run the shorter distance race). She then criticized them for it. And for that, Lukashenko took her out of the team and abduct her against her will on a plane back to Belarus

It was the federation that didn't want her to run at all, not even in her 200m race. Is that too complex to follow?

Typical 24 year old. Selfish. Scheming, There's one similar character at my office

Yeah, if your 24-year-old was trained for accounting, then was suddenly switched to sales behind her back without asking her, the same day she has to do her presentation in front of a global audience. That's simply a setup for her to fail on her face flat embarrassed in front of everybody

(I hope your boss never does that to you the morning you have to make a big presentation in front of some big clients. But if your boss ever does, I hope you have the backbone to stand up for yourself for being treated like that)

6 ( +7 / -1 )

Coaches make decisions for reasons. No idea why they wanted her to run a race that she doesn't train. Could be their other athlete has been pulled or political or health reasons. When she refused, she wasn't much use to the team - ship her home.

No way would an IoC court force a country to allow an athlete the country's IoC didn't want as a representative to compete. Trying to force that was dumb. There's no right to compete.

When she refused to run the race they wanted, then refused to fly home, her life in Belarus was over. The Govt there will go after her family now and look to harm Krystsina if they can anywhere else in the world.

-1 ( +2 / -3 )

Considering her country is basically an outlaw nation, run by a brutal thug of a dictator, she should be proud of her bravery in standing up to her bullying coaches and their mafia boss.

According to who? I must admit, I haven't seen any example of her saying anything critical of the government of Belarussia. All I saw is that she had a falling out with the coaches and they told her to go home. Does anyone have any idea what the falling out involved?

-3 ( +1 / -4 )

When she refused, she wasn't much use to the team - ship her home.

When she refused, she still has her own 200m race to run

There was no reason to ship her home

Let her run her race that's she's been training for

The Belarus federation was being petulant - first for not asking her before putting her in a race that she didn't train for. Second, it's the federation's fault for being stupid and not asking a longer distance runner instead to go down into the shorter race. There was no reason to take her off her 200m race

The Belarus federation is being a whiny baby because they got criticized for something they deserve to be criticized for. That's the reason they withdrew her from her race that's she's been training for all this time

She deserves to represent Belarus more than the petulant federation deserves to represent Belarus

4 ( +4 / -0 )

Judging from the voice recording of her discussions with the Belarus organising team after her video post, she was being emotionally unstable, and it seems she was just offended they didn't ask her about the relay which eventually escalated to her pulling a 'revenge' act of dropping her team and seeking asylum. Now she wants to run for the team?

There's more questions that answers here really.

0 ( +3 / -3 )

So she fell at the first (legal) hurdle?

0 ( +1 / -1 )

She has good reason to be frightened.

Vitaly Shishov, a Belarus activists in exile in Ukraine disappeared yesterday and was found today hanged in a park near his home in Ukraine.

Police say it was murder.

This is what happens to those that cross Lukashenko.

1 ( +2 / -1 )

If it was not for the Dictator in Belarus, I would not have any sympathy for her.

But her life was truly in danger after she criticized her coaches and returned back to Belarus.

She has a lot to learn. She wants her cake and eat it too.

-3 ( +1 / -4 )

She is really unstable mentally according to the transcript that was released on social media. When things didn’t go her way then she started to whine about her coaches! Good luck to Poland having a whiner. Of course the situation in Belarus isn’t good but all countries have their own issues even the country ( The US ) which was a beacon for democracy has been having a terrible situation. Few people are detained or disappear in Belarus and the western countries make noise about it. But in reality even people are made to disappear in The US without a trace by the Government and not only the US but other Western countries as well.

3 ( +7 / -4 )

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