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Belarusian-born sprinter Kristina Timanovskaya sparked the biggest political crisis of the Tokyo Olympics after her delegation tried to send her home after she publicly complained that her head coach had put her in the wrong Olympic event. Three years later, he left Belarus and its sports community (whose leadership reflects the country’s wider repression) and was finally able to compete in the Olympic events he had been training for his entire career, the 100 and 200 meters. , heading to his new homeland of Poland. “As soon as I arrived in Poland, my goal was to compete in the Paris Olympics,” he said in an interview in the Olympic Village. “It was very important for me to run my own distance.” Timanovskaya, whose name was also copied as Krystsina Tsimanouskaya, was one of the lucky few. Only one other Belarusian athlete, high jumper Maryia Zhodzik, was able to change her nationality to compete for Poland. Many who dared to speak out against the leaders of Belarus’s repressive government could only watch from the sidelines as Belarusian athletes competed in Paris, either by remaining silent or by demonstrating their loyalty to the president. For months in 2020, citizens of Belarus, a country of 9.2 million, held protests by the thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands. They questioned the validity of election results that showed victory for President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, who took control of the country in 1994 and has ruled in an increasingly authoritarian manner ever since. After Lukashenko arrested or exiled opposition leaders, prominent athletes united against his government and continued to protest alongside ordinary citizens. Ms. Timanovskaya participated in the protests and even posted about them on Instagram. When someone from a sports federation called her and threatened to remove her from the Olympic team, she said she was ready to remove her name from the list of competitors. But then the person mentioned his parents and brother, who were both in college at the time, suggesting they might have had problems at work and in school. She deleted the post. “They found everyone’s pressure points,” Ms. Timanovskaya said. More than 35,000 people were detained. Dozens of athletes were forced into exile, including some who had won multiple Olympic medals for Belarus. Having fallen out of favor with the government, they found themselves unable to compete in the Olympics. Instead, Belarus sent 17 athletes to the Paris games as “neutrals.” Russian athletes had the same deal; both Russia and close ally Belarus were banned from the Olympics because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “The moral of the story is that you have to be silent, you have to support the dictatorship, and then you can participate in the Olympics,” said Andrei Gnyot, 42, co-founder of SOS BY, a group of opposition athletes forged during the protests. “If you are against the dictatorship, you have everything to lose and you can’t even count on international support because they don’t want to listen to you or talk to you.” In 2016, the Belarusian Olympic Committee proudly announced that Stepan Popov became the first sambo wrestler to receive an award from the international fair play organization for carrying an injured opponent off the field. Today, he lives in exile in Poland, without a team to compete on, and makes a living as a taxi driver. “Today, athletes in Belarus are either propagandists or extremists,” Popov said in a recent video shared on social media. Dozens of organizations and hundreds of individuals in Belarus, including Olympic athletes, have been designated as “extremists” for their opposition to Lukashenko. Liking or subscribing to an athlete’s page on social networks can result in criminal sanctions. According to human rights organization Viasna, the country has 1,388 political prisoners. The group’s founder shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022 but is considered an “extremist organization” in Belarus. Sport is so important in Belarus that Lukashenko was president of the IOC from 1997 until February 2021, when his 48-year-old son Viktor took over the role. “Sport is our ideology,” Lukashenko said on his official website. “Raising the flag and singing the national anthem in honor of our athletes improves Belarus’ international image, but most importantly, they make millions of Belarusians proud of their homeland.” Although Belarusian athletes were classified as neutrals in Paris and competed without their flag, anthem or state officials, their national Olympic committee still supports all decisions regarding competitors. Among the Belarusian Olympic delegation was 23-year-old Ivan Litvinovich, a trampoline gymnast who won gold medals in Paris and Tokyo. The exiled athletes were unhappy with him because he filmed a video promoting a referendum in 2022 that would help Lukashenko further consolidate power and pave the way for Belarus to stockpile nuclear weapons again. The announcement hinted at his support for the expected outcome: constitutional amendments that will help Mr. Lukashenko stay in power until 2035. The successful vote came days after President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia invaded Ukraine, an effort Mr. Lukashenko helped by allowing it to use Belarus as a base of operations. As a result, Belarus was initially excluded from the Paris Olympics because of the war, as was Russia. But the International Olympic Committee decided last year that athletes from both countries could compete as “neutrals” if they met eligibility criteria, including not being active military personnel or supporters of the military. “The result is that athletes who were silent in Belarus or even supporting the regime are now going to the Olympics,” said Aliaksandra Herasimenia, a three-time Olympic swimming champion and former world champion in the 100-meter freestyle and founder of the Belarusian Sports Solidarity Foundation. “And the athletes who dared to stand up and protest against the regime didn’t have the chance to do so. Where is the justice? Is this what everyone calls fairness?” Starting in 2020, Ms. Herasimenia, Mr. Gniot and many others began lobbying the IOC and Western sports governing bodies to find a way to allow qualified Belarusians who risked their futures and adhered to many of the same values in the Olympic Charter to compete. The IOC did not immediately respond to a request for comment. “We write and trade collectively,” Ms. Herasimenia said. “They don’t even respond, they don’t react at all,” he said of the IOC. “If they respond, it’s very dry, with short answers and formulas.” He said he was happy for the two athletes who had been given Polish passports. “Today, there are many Belarusians, famous artists and athletes, but no one needs them here,” he said. “They just want to get a job in a shop, a cafe or somewhere else. And his talent is buried underground.” Ms. Herasimenia, 39, now teaches children swimming lessons and gives occasional masterclasses. She was sentenced in absentia by a Belarusian court to 12 years in prison, along with BSSF founder Aleksandr Apeikin. Sambo fighter Mr Popov left the country and was sentenced to 10 days in prison in October 2023, along with his parents and brother who remained in Belarus. The punishment was because they had been following social media pages deemed “extremist” by the government. They were fired from their jobs as sambo coaches by the school because they were unable to go to work. Three months ago, Ms Timanovskaya learned that a criminal case had been filed against her and her parents’ house had been searched. He has not been able to see them since he requested asylum in Poland. Mr Gniot is under house arrest in Serbia. He was detained on an Interpol warrant in October after filming an ad for telecommunications company Tele2. A Serbian court ruled that he could be extradited to Belarus, which he said would be a “death sentence” given the number of activists who have died or disappeared in prison. (Belarus is the only country in Europe where the death penalty remains legal, and last month a court sentenced German citizen Rico Krieger to death, though he ended up being part of a cross-border prisoner swap this month.) Geniot, a professional journalist, was detained for several months and then placed under house arrest pending his appeal. Ms. Timanovskaya said she felt very lucky to be able to continue competing. “There are a lot of athletes who want to continue playing sports, who want to compete on the international stage, but they just don’t have that opportunity,” he said. “No one is particularly interested in that, and no one can help them.”
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