The Winter Olympics have been presented as a stage for unity – a place where nations set aside conflict, athletes chase excellence, and the world gathers in a shared celebration of human potential. Yet Thursday was shadowed by controversy for the International Olympic Committee that raise difficult questions about neutrality and the limits of political expression in sport.
The Ukrainian skeleton racer Vladyslav Heraskevych was barred from competing after he insisted on wearing what he called a “helmet of memory”, created to honour Ukrainian athletes killed during Russia’s war against his country. He was informed only 21 minutes before racing by the IOC president, Kirsty Coventry, who spoke to the media in tears after she could not persuade him to change his mind.
For Heraskevych, the helmet was not a political statement but an act of remembrance. “Some of them were my friends,” he said of the 24 people emblazoned across the helmet, including the teenage weightlifter Alina Perehudova, the boxer Pavlo Ishchenko, the ice hockey player Oleksiy Loginov, the actor and athlete Ivan Kononenko, the diver and coach Mykyta Kozubenko, the shooter Oleksiy Khabarov and the dancer Daria Kurdel.
The artwork was created by the Ukrainian artist Iryna Prots. The figures, she said, represent possibility cut short: “Each pair of eyes could be seeing this world right now, could be fighting for their own medals, could be standing on their own pedestals.”
Within hours of Heraskevych’s disqualification, support surged across Ukraine. “The IOC’s disqualification of Vladyslav Heraskevych is a disgrace,” said the first deputy prime minister of Ukraine, Denys Shmyhal. “It is moral surrender dressed up as ‘neutrality’.”
Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president, echoed that sentiment after awarding Heraskevych a state honour, saying the decision contradicted the spirit of the Games and insisting that “the Olympic movement should help stop wars, not play into the hands of aggressors”. Even Ukraine’s private sector joined in: a co-founder of Monobank announced a 1 million hryvnia (£17,000) prize in recognition of the racer’s stance.
The controversy has not been limited to one athlete. The Ukrainian short-track speed skater Oleh Handei revealed on Thursday that he too had been ordered to alter his helmet – this time to tape over a line from the Ukrainian poet Lina Kostenko reading: “Where there is heroism, there can be no final defeat.” Olympic officials judged the quotation to be linked to the war and therefore in violation of neutrality rules. “They saw my sentence and they said to me, ‘Sorry, but it’s war propaganda,’” Handei said, adding that he would comply so he could still compete.
Though it did not receive the same coverage, earlier at the Games the IOC blocked another symbol. Haiti’s two-person delegation arrived wearing uniforms designed by Stella Jean, originally featuring the revolutionary Toussaint Louverture, the leader of the Haitian Revolution, on horseback. Louverture was a former slave who led the charge that created the world’s first Black republic in 1804. The IOC ruled the image violated restrictions on political symbolism, forcing the figure to be painted out, leaving only the charging red horse against a vivid tropical landscape.
Still, Haitian officials framed their presence as meaningful regardless of the alteration. “Haiti’s presence at Winter Olympics is a symbol, is a statement, not a coincidence,’’ said the ambassador Gandy Thomas. “We may not be a winter country, but we are a nation that refuses to be confined by expectation … absence is the most dangerous form of erasing.’’
Jean ultimately accepted the ruling while preserving what symbolism she could. “Rules are rules and must be respected, and that is what we have done,’’ she said. “But for us, it is important that this horse, [Louverture’s] horse, the general’s horse, remains.’’
The IOC have been caught between principle and reality. The Olympic charter demands political neutrality, yet athletes – who explicitly arrive representing countries – carry the weight of nations, wars, revolutions and memories that cannot be set aside at the arena gate.
As it stands
Oi, Oi, Oi! The Australians get on the board. Great Britain tomorrow?
1 🇳🇴 Norway 🥇 7 🥈 2 🥉 5 – Total: 14
2 🇮🇹 Italy 🥇 6 🥈 3 🥉 8 – Total: 17
3 🇺🇸 United States 🥇 4 🥈 7 🥉 3 – Total: 14
4 🇩🇪 Germany 🥇 4 🥈 3 🥉 2 – Total: 9
5 🇸🇪 Sweden 🥇 4 🥈 3 🥉 1 – Total: 8
– – –
14 🇦🇺 Australia 🥇 1 🥈 0 🥉 0 – Total: 1
Picture of the day
Further reading from the Guardian
What to look out for today
Times are all in local time in Milan and Cortina. For Sydney it is +10 hours, for London it is -1 hour, for New York it is -6 hours and San Francisco it is -9 hours.
Cross-country skiing – 11.45am🥇: Norway’s Johannes Høsflot Klæbo attempts to make history in the men’s 10km interval start free.
Biathlon – 2pm🥇: can Italy’s Tommaso Giacomel challenge the French World Cup leader Éric Perrot and Norway’s Johan-Olav Botn in the men’s 10km sprint?
Snowboard – 2.41pm🥇, 7.30pm🥇: Team GB’s Charlotte Bankes aims to make her first women’s cross final before the men’s halfpipe in the evening.
Speed skating – 4pm🥇: the longest distance in this discipline, the men’s 10000m, promises thrill.
Figure skating – 7pm🥇: will Ilia Malinin attempt – and land – the quad Axel?
Skeleton – 9.05pm🥇: Matt Weston and Marcus Wyatt will attempt to become Britain’s first male Olympic skeleton champion.
The last word
One of those films that you don’t believe in, because it’s not possible for it to end that well. A fake” – Federica Brignone on her first Olympic gold at 35. The Italian won the women’s super-G 10 months after she broke multiple bones in her left leg and was unable to walk for three months.
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