As the Olympic men’s skeleton race commences on Thursday, all attention will be fixed on Ukraine’s Vladyslav Heraskevych, whose planned defiance poses a significant challenge for the Milan Cortina Games.
Heraskevych intends to compete wearing a helmet dedicated to Ukrainian athletes and coaches killed during the ongoing conflict with Russia.
This tribute, however, has been deemed a violation of the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) rules against political statements and inappropriate for competition.
Should Heraskevych proceed, he faces potential sanctions, including disqualification from the Olympics.
This would undoubtedly place the IOC in a precarious position, as expelling an athlete for honouring war victims would almost certainly provoke widespread criticism.
The IOC has sided with Heraskevych before. When he displayed a “No war in Ukraine” sign after his fourth and final run at the 2022 Beijing Olympics, the IOC said he was simply calling for peace and did not find him in violation of the Olympic charter.
“We want him to compete. We really, really want him to have his moment,” IOC spokesman Mark Adams said Wednesday.
“That’s very, very important. We want all athletes to have their moment and that’s the point. We want all our athletes to have a fair and level playing field.”
The first two runs of the race are on Thursday, with the final two runs on Friday night. Heraskevych is a legitimate medal hopeful, and he’s evidently willing to risk his chance at a medal for his tribute to those he considers heroes.
Visible on the helmet are teenage weightlifter Alina Perehudova, boxer Pavlo Ischenko, ice hockey player Oleksiy Loginov, actor and athlete Ivan Kononenko, diving athlete and coach Mykyta Kozubenko, shooter Oleksiy Habarov and dancer Daria Kurdel.
“Some of them were my friends,” Heraskevych, who is his country’s flag bearer, told reporters of the portraits after his training session at the Cortina sliding centre.
There have been a number of incidents over the years where athletes protested on the field of play or on the medals podium.
The most famous case dates back to the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City when US sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised black-gloved fists during the 200 metres medal ceremony to protest racial injustice in their country.
That led to their expulsion from the Games, although Smith kept his gold medal and Carlos his bronze.
More recently, at the 2024 Paris Olympics, Afghan breakdancer Manizha Talash, a member of the refugee Olympic team, was disqualified after wearing a cape with the slogan “Free Afghan Women” during a pre-qualifying competition.
However, there have also been cases where athletes and teams escaped punishment when their action was not deemed political.
Australia’s women’s footnall team unfurled a flag of the first peoples of Australia at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 but, while not one of the recognised flags of participating nations at the Games, the team were not sanctioned.
Two Chinese cycling medallists who wore badges featuring the head of their country’s former leader Mao Zedong on the Tokyo Olympics podium escaped with a warning.
