For some athletes, major events can be an opportunity to defect

Members of the Iranian football team who chose to remain in Australia this week are far from the first to travel to a competition and stay there

Several members of the Iranian women’s football team have accepted asylum offers from Australia after playing in a tournament there, choosing not to return to a country locked in a spiralling conflict.

The women had stood silent in apparent protest during the national anthem before their first game at the Asian Cup on the Gold Coast, drawing condemnation from some in their home country, including calls for severe punishment.

The players’ decision to stay in Australia was a dramatic development for the AFC Women’s Asian Cup, but it is not the first time athletes have arrived for a competition, and then decided to stay. International sports competitions, including the Olympics, have long provided
an opportunity for athletes hoping to leave their home countries to defect and seek asylum.

Here are some high-profile instances:

Hungarians After the Revolution, 1956: The 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, Australia, came at the height of the Cold War. Indeed, just a month before the Games began, the Soviet Union had invaded Hungary to put down an uprising against the communist government. More than 40 Hungarian athletes and officials declined to return to their country after the Games.

A semifinal men’s water polo game between Hungary and the Soviet Union was the crucible for all the ill feelings. Players taunted, kicked and punched each other. Angry pro-Hungarian spectators nearly rioted, rushing to the poolside, where police restrained them. The game became known as “Blood in the Pool.” Hungary won 4-0, and at least several members of the team stayed in Australia after the Games.

A Tennis phenom and future superstar, 1975: Martina Navratilova arrived at the US Open in 1975 as a two-time Grand Slam finalist and an up-and-coming star from Czechoslovakia. But officials in her home country worried that Navratilova, 18 at the time, was becoming too westernised, and were apparently thinking of limiting her travel and preventing her from playing in certain competitions. After a semifinal loss to Chris Evert in New York, she defected.

“My tennis federation gave me a hard time. I couldn’t play the tournaments I wanted. Couldn’t travel where I wanted,” she told The New York Times in 1976. “I did it to be free.” She wound up winning 18 Grand Slam singles titles.

In 2008, she became a citizen of the democratic Czech Republic, while remaining a US citizen.

Contretemps over a diver, 1976: A 17-year-old Soviet diver, Sergei Nemtsanov, placed ninth in the platform event at the Montreal Olympics in 1976, and then announced he was staying in the city. There were reports that he had fallen for an American diver.

Soviet officials reacted furiously, saying that Nemtsanov had been “abducted and brainwashed by provocateurs.” They even threatened to pull their team out of the last few days of the Games.

Nemtsanov was given permission by Canada to stay. But after a few weeks, he had second thoughts and returned to the Soviet Union. He competed again for the Soviet Union at the 1980 Olympics.

Carrying the flag, then leaving it behind, 1996: Weight lifter Raed Ahmed was given the honour of carrying the Iraqi flag at the opening ceremony of the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. Before the Games were over, he had defected.

Ahmed acknowledged that he had been thinking about defecting even as he was carrying the flag. A Shiite Muslim, he said he had faced persecution in Iraq, then still run by Saddam Hussein, a Sunni. “I love my country,” Ahmed said. “I just don’t like the regime.”

He settled in the large Arab community in Dearborn, Michigan, and was able to return and see family members in Iraq after Saddam’s fall.

A brief mass exodus, 2018: More than 200 athletes and officials, most of them from African nations, applied for visas to remain in Australia after the Commonwealth Games in 2018. Their decision became a hot-button issue in the country, which had a mixed record on admitting asylum-seekers. Some Australian officials sternly warned that the athletes should not try to “game the system.”

The next year, the government denied the bulk of the asylum applications.

Airport drama, 2021: Krystsina Tsimanouskaya of Belarus went to the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 expecting to compete in the 100- and 200-metre dashes. But her coaches, at the last minute, pulled her from the 200 and entered her in a relay instead. After she publicly criticised
the decision, she was told she would be sent home. Belarusian officials claimed she was unwell.

She was taken to the airport but became concerned. “My parents called me and told me not to come home, because it would be unsafe, considering they already started talking on TV that I was mentally ill,” she said. “It was obvious that upon arrival at the airport I would not get home, but they would immediately take me somewhere.”

Before she was put on a plane, she approached Japanese police at the airport, seeking help. Officers surrounded her and she did not board the plane.

She was eventually offered asylum in Poland and moved there, becoming a Polish citizen in 2022. She represented that country in the 2024 Games, running a relay, and the 200.

(Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH)