Krystsina Tsimanouskaya: ‘I’m sure my career would be over if I was in Belarus now’

Sprinter who defected after the Tokyo Olympics has built a new life in Warsaw and won the right to run for Poland at this month’s world championships

“It really feels like it was yesterday,” says Krystsina Tsimanouskaya, sipping from a glass of juice as she recalls leaving her old life behind. Just over two years have passed since the sprinter, ejected from the Belarus team at the Tokyo Olympics and fearing for her freedom if she returned home, sought refuge in Poland and faced a future fraught with uncertainty. Her story had spent several days in the international headlines but, once the glare faded, there were no guarantees a promising career would be able to regather momentum.

The road has been long and not without pain but Tsimanouskaya feels as if, at long last, she is working from a position of strength. It is a sweltering summer day in Warsaw and she has just sweated through an hour’s training at Stadion RKS Skra, a sprawling and largely dilapidated old venue near the city centre. “I feel really, really good in myself,” she says. The best she has ever felt as an athlete? “Uh-huh. I’ve changed a lot in my technique, in my body, my life, my food, a lot of things, and it’s really helped me. Now I have two years’ work behind me.”