Belarus Casts Aside Dissident Athletes, Their Talent ‘Buried’

Kristina Timanovskaya was able to change her citizenship from Belarusian to Polish to compete in the Paris Games.Don’t miss a moment at the Paris Olympics. Sign up for our daily email to receive the biggest highlights, the latest medal count and the stories you won't see on TV.

The Belarusian-born sprinter Kristina Timanovskaya set off the biggest political crisis of the Tokyo Games after her delegation tried to forcibly send her home for publicly complaining that the head coach had signed her up for the wrong Olympic event.

Three years later, she has left behind Belarus and its sporting community — whose leadership mirrors the wider repression in the country — and finally been able to…