Red Flags Were Raised, but an Olympic Dream Was Dashed

Maya Wasowicz, a top karate fighter, was knocked out of qualifying under suspicious circumstances. A U.S.O.P.C. report backed up her claims, but Wasowicz still won’t be in Tokyo.

Maya Wasowicz was all alone when the last flicker of her Olympic dream died. The world’s best karate fighters were throwing punches in Paris to determine who would go to the Olympics. Wasowicz and her supporters all felt that she should have been there, too. Instead, she sat on a bed in her grandmother’s apartment in Opole, Poland, streaming the event live on her phone — alone, in the dark. “I was definitely grieving it,” Wasowicz said, days later. “My family and friends refused to watch. But I had to see it.”