Ukrainian skeleton athlete Vladyslav Heraskevych was disqualified from the 2026 Winter Olympic Games for emblazoning on his helmet images of 20 of the estimated 650 athletes and coaches killed by Russia during its nearly 4-year-old invasion of Ukraine.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport upheld the International Olympic Committee’s decision Friday. But the disqualification had already ended his Olympic dream – at least in Milan Cortina – since the original ruling came less than an hour before his event.
Russia has destroyed more than 800 sporting facilities in Ukraine, in addition to causing the deaths of the athletes and coaches, according to Ukraine’s embassy in the United States.
Why this matters
War and politics have been an inescapable part of the Olympics since the modern Games began in 1896.
Awe-inspiring sporting triumphs that celebrate human physical excellence and overcoming adversity in the face of great odds include track star Jesse Owens’ famous wins in 1936, the U.S. hockey Miracle on Ice in 1980, and swimmer Michael Phelps’ record eight gold medal haul in 2008.
But Owens’ famous triumph in 1936 came at the Berlin Games hosted by Nazi Germany and resoundingly disproved the Hitler regime’s odious racial theories. After Hitler invaded Europe in 1939, the Olympics were suspended entirely until 1948. At the 1972 Games in Munich, Palestinian terrorists massacred 11 Israeli athletes. In 1980, the United States boycotted the Games in Moscow because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan the year before. The Soviets and their communist satellites returned the favor in 1984 and boycotted the Games in Los Angeles.
After Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, the International Olympic Committee banned Russia and Belarus from the Games – but only their Olympic committees. Individual athletes from these nations were able to participate under “neutral” status, and 13 Russian athletes are currently competing this way in Italy. Other Russians switched nationalities and are competing under flags of Russia friendly nations such as Kazakhstan and Georgia.
But in December, the IOC officially agreed to allow Russian and Belarusian youth athletes to return to international competitions, a decision Ukraine protested to no avail. Gianni Infantino, the head of FIFA, world soccer’s governing body, has also called for the return of Russian athletes. So has Luc Tardif, the head of the International Ice Hockey Federation.
What’s next
The International Olympic Committee and other international sporting bodies must do better. It is a travesty of justice to ban Ukrainian athletes for honoring their friends killed by Russia, while allowing Russian athletes to compete under “neutral” status and paving the way for their official return to the world’s main sporting competitions.
The IOC must ask itself: if the Olympics were held in 1940 and 1944, should German athletes have been allowed to compete? The moral answer is obvious, even though the politics of international sport today are clearly inclined otherwise.
