Poland has granted a humanitarian visa to 'at risk' Belarusian Olympic athlete Krystsina Tsimanouskaya.
The Polish Foreign Ministry confirmed the move after the sprinter claimed her team had tried to force her to board a flight home from Tokyo against her will.
She has now walked entered Poland's embassy in Japan after refusing to get on a flight home to Belarus.
It comes after the International Olympic Committee confirmed the athlete spent the night in an airport hotel after she approached police at Tokyo International Airport.
Yesterday, Polish foreign ministry official Marcin Przydacz said: "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."
Today he tweeted: "Kryscina Tsimanouskaya a Belarusian athlet is already in direct contact with Polish diplomats in Tokyo. She has received a humanitarian Visa.
"Poland will do whatever is necessary to help her to continue her sporting career. Poland always stands for solidarity."
Ms Tsimanouskaya's husband, Arseniy Zdanevich, left Belarus for Ukraine last night and confirmed he will reunite with his wife wherever she ends up.
IOC spokesman Mark Adams said she is 'safe and secure' in Tokyo and in touch with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and other agencies.
Ms Tsimanouskaya, who was due to race in the 200 metre heats at the Olympic Stadium today, had her Games cut short when she said she was taken to the airport to board a Turkish Airlines flight.
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A Reuters photographer witnessed the sprinter standing next to Japanese police at the airport yesterday.
She said: "I think I am safe. I am with the police."
She told a Reuters reporter via Telegram that the Belarusian head coach had turned up at her room yesterday 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 (pm) 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 coaches had decided to withdraw Ms 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."
But Ms Tsimanouskaya said she had been removed from the team due "to the fact that I spoke on my Instagram about the negligence of our coaches".
IOC spokesman Mr Adams said the committee would continue conversations with Ms Tsimanouskaya today and the Olympics governing body had asked for a full report from the Belarus' Olympic committee.
Yesterday's incident, first reported by Reuters, highlighted discord in Belarus, a former Soviet state that is run with a tight grip by President Alexander Lukashenko.
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 spokesman said they were still collecting details about what exactly occurred.
He said the IOC had taken a number of actions against Belarus' Olympic Committee in the run up to the Games following nationwide protests in the country.
A source at the Belarusian Sport Solidarity Foundation, which supports athletes jailed or sidelined for their political views, said Ms Tsimanouskaya planned to request asylum in Germany or Austria today.
The athlete filmed a video that was published on Telegram by the Belarusian Sport Solidarity Foundation, in which she asked the International Olympic Committee to get involved in her case.
