Olympic sprinter Krystsina Tsimanouskaya decided to defect as she was being driven to a Tokyo airport because her grandmother told her that it was not safe to return home to Belarus.
In an exclusive interview in Warsaw on Thursday, she said her family feared she would be sent to a psychiatric ward if she went back to Belarus, and that her grandmother had called her to tell her not to return.
"I have always been far from politics, I didn't sign any letters or go to any protests, I didn't say anything against the Belarusian government," she said.