Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai has told a French newspaper that international concern over her wellbeing is based on "an enormous misunderstanding", as the International Olympic Committee confirmed a face-to-face meeting and said she would be attending several Winter Olympics events in Beijing.
L'Equipe, which specialises in sports news, published the interview on Monday, in which Ms Peng once again denied having accused a senior Chinese official of sexual assault.
The publication said it spoke to the tennis player a day earlier in a Beijing hotel in an hour-long interview organised through China's Olympic committee.
The IOC released a statement on Monday saying IOC president Thomas Bach had dinner with Ms Peng on Saturday, and she attended the China-Norway curling match with IOC member Kirsty Coventry.
The newspaper said it had to submit questions in advance and that a Chinese Olympic committee official sat in on the discussion and translated her comments from Chinese.
The newspaper published her comments verbatim — which it said was another precondition for the interview — in question-and-answer form.
L'Equipe asked Ms Peng about a post in November on her verified account on Chinese social media platform Weibo, which kicked off a storm of international concern about her.
In that now-deleted post, Ms Peng wrote about Zhang Gaoli, a former vice-premier and member of the ruling Chinese Communist Party's Politburo Standing Committee, with whom she had had a recent encounter, and she wrote she had also had sex with him seven years earlier.
Of the recent encounter, she wrote, "I had buried everything in my heart. But why did you come back and take me to your house to force me to have sex with you if you had no intention to take responsibility for me at all?"
Ms Peng briefly disappeared from public view, then appeared at some promotional appearances arranged by the government.
The interview with L'Equipe was her first sit-down discussion with non-Chinese language media since the accusation.
But speaking to L'Equipe, Ms Peng denied having accused Mr Zhang of assault.
"Sexual assault? I never said that anyone made me submit to a sexual assault," the newspaper quoted her as saying.
"My wish is that the meaning of this post no longer be skewed."
The Women's Tennis Association, which suspended tournaments in China and said in December that Peng's appearances did not address its concerns about her wellbeing, did not immediately respond to a request for comments on her latest remarks.
The IOC statement said that Ms Peng "would attend several events at the Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022 over the coming days".
During the dinner with Mr Bach and Ms Coventry, "all three agreed that any further communication about the content of the meeting would be left to her discretion".
The IOC said they "spoke about their common experience as athletes at the Olympic Games, and Peng Shuai spoke of her disappointment at not being able to qualify for the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020".
"In this context, she also shared her intention to travel to Europe when the COVID-19 pandemic is over, and the IOC president invited her to Lausanne to visit the IOC and The Olympic Museum, to continue the conversation on their Olympic experiences.
"Peng Shuai accepted this invitation."
In a press conference, when asked if the IOC believed Ms Peng was speaking freely or under duress, spokesperson Mark Adams said he didn't think it was a judgement for the sporting organisation to make.
"So we as a sports organisation are doing everything to ensure that she is happy, and I don’t think it’s for us to be able to judge in one way, just as it’s not for you to judge either in one way or another her position," he said.
Wires/ABC
