MONACO—An investigation into two Belarus team officials who tried to force sprinter Krystsina Tsimanouskaya on a flight from the Tokyo Olympics will now be run by track and field authorities.
World Athletics said on Thursday its independent Athletics Integrity Unit is taking over the case from the International Olympic Committee (IOC). No timetable was given for the investigation.
The Belarus team’s treatment of Tsimanouskaya created a diplomatic incident at the Tokyo Olympics with Japanese authorities and Poland’s embassy coming to her aid.
Team officials Artur Shimak and Yury Maisevich were involved in taking Tsimanouskaya to the airport to send her home to Belarus after she criticized coaches on social media.
Tsimanouskaya sought help at the airport because she feared for her safety if she returned to Minsk. Within days, she and her husband got humanitarian visas to stay in Poland.
Belarus has been in turmoil amid a state-ordered security crackdown since August 2020 when authoritarian president Aleksander Lukashenko claimed a sixth term after an election widely viewed as rigged in his favor. The former Soviet republic has relentlessly pursued its critics.
Shimak and Maisevich continued to have contact with Belarus team members in Tokyo for four more days after the airport incident until the IOC withdrew their Olympic credentials.
IOC President Thomas Bach said in Tokyo it was a “deplorable case.”
The IOC last year banned both Lukashenko and his son Viktor from attending future Olympics after athletes said they faced reprisals and intimidation in the security crackdown.
Lukashenko led the Belarusian Olympic committee from the 1990s until this year when his son replaced him.
Still, the IOC had been urged for months ahead of Tokyo by activists in Belarus and international groups representing athletes to fully suspend the national Olympic committee. That would have let Tsimanouskaya and the rest of the 103-member Belarusian team compete in Tokyo as independents under the Olympic flag.
Tsimanouskaya had criticized her coaches for asking her to run in an event she had not trained for. She was needed to replace athletes ruled ineligible because of a substandard national anti-doping program.
World Athletics said its investigators in the Belarus case “will conduct the procedure, with the full collaboration and support of the IOC.”
EX-WORLD CHAMP BANNED
FORMER world champion weightlifter Boyanka Kostova was banned for eight years for doping on Thursday after making her comeback from an earlier sanction for performance-enhancing drug use at the Olympics.
The International Testing Agency (ITA) said Kostova tested positive for traces of the steroid stanozolol on her way to winning the European championship title in the 59-kilogram category in April. She was born in Bulgaria but later switched allegiance to Azerbaijan, which lavishly funded her bids for Olympic medals.
Kostova was banned from 2016 through 2018 after a reanalysis of her sample from the 2012 Olympics, where she placed fifth, found the steroid turinabol.
Kostova was the 2015 world champion and world record holder in the old 58-kilogram category but was prevented from competing at the Olympics the following year in Rio de Janeiro amid her first doping case. Despite her European title, she didn’t compete at this year’s Olympics in Tokyo because she didn’t have enough valid results during the qualifying period.
On Monday, the ITA also announced doping bans for three Russian weightlifters including two-time European champion Andrei Demanov. The cases were based on re-examining evidence of past doping and cover-ups within Russia. None of the three had competed recently. AP
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