Sports
Belarusian sprinter 'safe and secure' in Tokyo hotel after plea to IOC for help – CBC.ca
A Belarusian athlete walked into a Polish Embassy in Japan on Monday, a day after refusing to board a flight at a Tokyo airport that she said she was taken to against her wishes by her team.
Krystsina Tsimanouskaya, 24, will seek asylum in Poland, said a member of the local Belarus community who was in touch with her.
Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Marcin Przydacz wrote on Twitter that Tsimanouskaya has been “offered a humanitarian visa and is free to pursue her sporting career in Poland if she so chooses.”
An activist group said the sprinter is applying for a visa. Vadim Krivosheyev of the Belarusian Sport Solidarity Foundation said the group has bought her a ticket to Warsaw for Aug. 4.
Poland 🇵🇱 is ready to help Kryscina Tsimanouskaya a Belarusian athlete ordered by the Lukashenka regime to return form Olympic Games to Minsk. She was offered a humanitarian visa and is free to pursue her sporting career in Poland if she so chooses.
—@marcin_przydacz
Tsimanouskaya spent the night in an airport hotel after she went to Japanese police at Haneda airport seeking protection late on Sunday, IOC spokesperson Mark Adams told a media conference. A number of agencies were in contact with the sprinter, including the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, he said.
In a brewing diplomatic incident, both Poland and the Czech Republic publicly offered her assistance on Monday.
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“She has assured us she is safe and secure. We are talking again to her this morning to understand what the next steps will be,” Adams said. “We need to listen to her, find out what she wants and support her in her decision.”
The sprinter, who was due to race in the 200-metre heats at Olympic Stadium on Monday, had her Games cut short when she said she was taken to the airport to board a Turkish Airlines flight.
A removal order ‘from above’
She told a Reuters reporter via Telegram that the Belarusian head coach had turned up at her room on Sunday at the athletes village and told her she had to leave.
“The head coach came over to me and said there had been an order from above to remove me,” she wrote in the message. “At 5 [p.m.] they came my room and told me to pack and they took me to the airport.”
But she refused to board the flight, telling Reuters: “I will not return to Belarus.”
The Belarusian Olympic Committee said in a statement that coaches had decided to withdraw Tsimanouskaya from the Games on doctors’ advice about her “emotional, psychological state.”
Belarus athletics head coach Yuri Moisevich told state television he “could see there was something wrong with her … She either secluded herself or didn’t want to talk.”
The IOC would continue conversations with Tsimanouskaya on Monday and the Olympics governing body had asked for a full report from Belarus’s Olympic committee, Adams said.
In response to a number of questions by journalists about what the IOC would do to ensure other athletes in the village were protected, the IOC spokesperson said they were still collecting details about what exactly occurred.
Earlier seeking asylum in Japan
A member of the local Belarusian community, who had been in contact with the athlete throughout the night, told Reuters that after long talks with various officials she had petitioned for asylum in Japan.
The Japanese government said the athlete had been kept safe while Tokyo 2020 organizers and the IOC checked her intentions.
“Japan is co-ordinating with relevant parties and continue to take appropriate action,” said chief cabinet secretary Katsunobu Kato.
WATCH | Belarusian athlete says she was taken to airport against her will:
Poland’s Olympic committee did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Czech Foreign Minister Jakub Kulhanek said he considered the situation around the Belarusian “scandalous.”
“The Czech Republic is ready to help,” he tweeted. “We are offering her a visa to enter the territory so that she can apply for international protection with us. Our embassy in Tokyo is also ready to help.”
Tsimanouskaya’s refusal to board the plane, first reported by Reuters, highlighted discord in Belarus, a former Soviet state that is run with a tight grip by President Alexander Lukashenko.
On Monday, the IOC spokesperson said it had taken a number of actions against Belarus’s Olympic committee in the run-up to the Games following nationwide protests in the country.
In March, the IOC refused to recognize the election of Lukashenko’s son Viktor as head of the country’s Olympic committee. Both father and son were banned from attending the Games in December.
Sports
Raptors reserve Jontay Porter might have thought he was smarter than the system. The NBA says he wasn't – Toronto Star
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Jontay Porter had potential, but then, a lot of people have potential, don’t they? Porter’s particular potential was his ability to play a sport where being halfway competent can easily net you $10 million (U.S.) per year, which is a gift, if you treat it carefully. Porter apparently did not.
Porter was given a lifetime suspension from the NBA on Wednesday, with the league concluding he had bet on basketball, influenced insider bets on basketball, and intentionally underperformed to influence betting.
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Sports
‘I wanted it’: Matthews’ great chase for 70 masks Maple Leafs’ concerns – Sportsnet.ca
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Sports
Canucks will face the Predators in first round of the playoffs – Vancouver Is Awesome
The winner of the Western Conference was decided on Wednesday night and, with it, the Vancouver Canucks’ opponent in the first round of the 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs.
The Dallas Stars needed just a single point to secure first in the West, preventing the Canucks from potentially tying them in points in their final game of the regular season. A tie would have seen the Canucks move into first as they have the edge in regulation wins, which is the first tie-breaker.
The Stars were facing the St. Louis Blues on Wednesday night, who had already been eliminated from playoff contention. The Blues still had pride on the line, however, and put up a stalwart effort. The Blues took a 1-0 lead in the second period on a goal from Robert Thomas, but the Stars responded in the third with a goal from Mason Marchment.
With no further scoring in regulation, the Stars ensured at least one point by taking the game to overtime. The Stars then added another superfluous point by winning the game in the shootout.
That means the Canucks will finish second in the Western Conference behind the Stars no matter the result of their game on Thursday against the Winnipeg Jets. Accordingly, they’ll face the team in the first Wild Card spot in the first round of the playoffs: the Nashville Predators.
On paper, it seems like the ideal match-up for the Canucks, as they swept their three-game series against the Predators this season, out-scoring them 13-to-6. They certainly seem like a better match-up than the Los Angeles Kings, who won three of their four meetings with the Canucks, or the defending Stanley Cup champion Vegas Golden Knights, who split their four games with the Canucks and will be getting Mark Stone back for the playoffs.
The Predators won’t be an easy out, however. Since their last meeting with the Canucks in December, the Predators have caught fire. They went on an 18-game point streak from mid-February to late March, going 15-0-3 in that span. They’re a dangerous team with a Norris-candidate defenceman in Roman Josi, great forward depth, strong goaltending, and solid underlying numbers.
Of course, so are the Canucks, only more so.
They don’t just have a Norris-candidate defenceman; they have the likely Norris winner in Quinn Hughes. They don’t just have great forward depth; they have better top-end talent than the Predators as well as the likes of Conor Garland, Elias Lindholm, and Dakota Joshua on the third line. They don’t just have strong goaltending; they have Thatcher Demko.
As for underlying numbers, well…
Okay, the Canucks and Predators are nearly identical by the underlying numbers. Eerily similar, really.
The one thing the Canucks have done distinctly better than the Predators is actually score on the chances they create. And prevent the opposing team from scoring on the chances they create. So, two things, really. Pretty important things, as things go.
The schedule for the Canucks’ first round has yet to be released, though it’s expected to begin on Sunday, April 21 as opposed to Tuesday, April 23, as was initially expected.
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