“We have announced that Nafi will not participate in the World Indoor Championships because she has not met the qualification criteria,” said a short message from her management on Thursday. The qualifying period for the World Cup in Poland started after the Olympic Games in Paris. As a result, her Olympic title in the heptathlon with 6,880 points no longer counted for this indoor World Championship. Since Nafi Thiam retired from the recent outdoor World Championships in Tokyo and she did not complete a single pentathlon during the indoor season, she did not meet the selection criteria. The world record holder in the pentathlon could still try to qualify or count on a wild card for the European Championships, but she has not been thinking about an indoor season for a while.
Moreover, the conflict with Belgian Athletics at the Athletics World Championships in Tokyo in September about the code of conduct is still simmering in the background. The woman from Namur refused to sign it before the start of the World Cup, because she believed that her commercial interests were being violated. The dispute spread quickly and shook the entire top of Belgian athletics. It led to hearings in parliament at the end of last year, during which its management spoke of “an irreparable breach of trust” with the Belgian athletics associations.
“Nafi is still very keen to give her all to win medals for Belgium. But she does not want a repeat of Tokyo 2025. And to date, that situation has not yet been resolved,” her manager Helena Van der Plaetsen said last month. “Nafi cannot shape her sporting goals because there is uncertainty about how she will approach such a championship,” said Van der Plaetsen. “We will not rush headlong into such an adventure again without the necessary changes.”
The next big event is the European Outdoor Championships in Birmingham in August. Belgian Athletics and Thiam will now be given a few extra months to repair the completely soured relationship. However, a new code of conduct and agreement on image rights should soon be ready for all other Belgian athletes participating in the World Indoor Championships.
