Belarus runner used quick thinking to avoid being sent home

Belarusian Olympic sprinter Krystsina Tsimanouskaya (Czarek Sokolowski/AP)

A Belarusian Olympic sprinter who feared reprisals back home after publicly criticising her coaches at the Tokyo Games used quick thinking to get help, using her phone to translate a plea and show it to Japanese police as she tried to avoid being forced on to a plane.

On Thursday Krystsina Tsimanouskaya described a dramatic series of events at the Olympics that led her to decide not to return to Belarus, where an authoritarian government has relentlessly pursued its critics. She fled instead to Poland, arriving on Wednesday.