The only trace visible today is her hair. She cut it in prison because there was no hairdryer and the dreadlocks she wore stayed wet after showering, and she was afraid of getting pneumonia because of the cold. Brittney Griner spent 10 months in a Russian prison accused of drug possession. The American basketball player was arrested at a Moscow airport in February 2022 for traveling with two vape cartridges containing 0.252 and 0.45 grams of cannabis oil. She was sentenced to nine years in prison just as Russia invaded Ukraine and Western sanctions began. Today she is playing with her national team in the Olympic final against France (3:30 p.m., TVE).
Between the beginning of the nightmare and this afternoon’s match for Olympic gold it seems like a lifetime has passed. The 33-year-old pivot tells it in the book Coming home.“I will never be able to forget any of that,” Griner says today, reliving her time behind bars, when in the moments of greatest depression she clung to photos of her family to regain hope of release. In her cell, a hole in the floor filled with excrement was her toilet; the food served to her by the guards made her sick; she had no towels, soap, toothpaste or deodorant at her disposal; she would tear up her T-shirts or sheets to clean herself with them, or to use them as toilet paper; she was forced to undress to be photographed. “I have never been so dirty in my life,” she would explain. On one occasion she thought about taking her own life.
After months of negotiations, the United States agreed to a prisoner exchange with Vladimir Putin’s government. It took place in Abu Dhabi on December 8, 2022. Griner and the Russian Viktor Bout, an arms dealer known as The Merchant of Death and who inspired the film Lord of War, starring Nicolas Cage, crossed paths on one plane after another.
US President Joe Biden, to whom Griner had written a letter in July, gave the green light to the operation even though it meant sidelining Paul Whelan, an American executive sentenced to 16 years for espionage. Griner, a much more high-profile case, was put on the back burner.
“I will never leave the United States again, unless it is to represent my country’s national team in the Olympic Games,” said the player after returning home and after signing for the Phoenix Mercury in her return to the courts in the WNBA. Between 2014 and 2022 she played for Ekaterinburg, Russia, where she coincided with the Spanish Alba Torrens. Basketball has now marked her return to normality, although for months she suffered from post-traumatic stress and underwent therapy to erase the “before”. Her walks in the mountains in Phoenix helped her, and getting away “from the screens and the cameras”.
From prison to Paris, where she is now seeking her third Olympic gold after Rio and Tokyo. In July, she and her wife Cherelle gave birth to a boy named Bash Raymond. Her childhood was not easy either, as she was bullied at school for being gay. She no longer wants to talk about the hell of being locked up in a Russian prison. She has a new spirit of resistance with which she is now pursuing Olympic gold. And short hair.
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