Tokyo: Two coaches involved in the attempt to force an Olympic athlete home to Belarus against her will have been stripped of their credentials and expelled from the Olympic Village.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) confirmed that Artur Shimak and Yury Maisevich had left the Olympic Village. An investigation is underway.
The case of Krystina Timanovskaya caught global attention after she refused her team’s orders to fly home.
She is now in Poland, where she has been granted a humanitarian visa.
The case of the 200-meter specialist Kristina Timanovskaya, 24, briefly turned the Tokyo Games into the center of a major diplomatic conflict when Timanovskaya sought sanctuary from the police at Narita International Airport. Timanovskaya, who is now in Poland, said she had been “kidnapped” after writing an Instagram post criticizing the Belarusian athletic federation’s preparations for the Olympics.
