Kyiv, Ukraine (AP) — After being disqualified from the Milan Cortina Olympic GamesUkrainian skeleton racer Vladyslav Heraskevych returned to kyiv to find his capital suffering from power, heat and water outages. However, he is happy to be back.
“Despite all this, home is the warmest place,” Heraskevych told The Associated Press on Wednesday, standing in kyiv’s central square as temperatures hovered around minus 12 degrees Celsius (10 degrees Fahrenheit).
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Heraskevych, a likely medal contender, was disqualified about 45 minutes before the competition on Feb. 12 after refusing a last-minute request from the International Olympic Committee not to use a helmet. honoring over 20 athletes and coaches killed since Russia invaded his country four years ago. The Court of Arbitration for Sport rejected Heraskevych’s appeal against the IOC and the International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation the next day, although his race had already started and he had no chance of competing even if he won the appeal.
The helmet and the aftermath surrounding it have garnered heavy media coverage around the world, and Heraskevych’s plan is to use his new spotlight to launch a fundraising campaign for the families of the fallen Ukrainians painted on his helmet.
“It wasn’t me who drew attention to Ukraine, it was them,” he said. “It’s their voices that are heard very loudly.”
His conversation with the IOC President
Recalling his disqualification, he described a conversation with IOC President Kirsty Coventry, held about an hour before the race, as respectful but unsuccessful.
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“Unfortunately, we were not heard,” he said, adding that IOC representatives did not clearly explain how the helmet violated the rules.
Coventry has repeatedly said his disqualification was justified and based on the guidelines for athlete expression at the Olympics. In particular, they assert that “the emphasis placed on the playing field during competitions and official ceremonies must be placed on celebrating the athletes’ performances”. Heraskevych never made it onto the field – not in competition, anyway.
He also questioned what he described as inconsistent enforcement, citing the display of a Russian flag on Italian snowboarder Roland Fischnaller’s helmet with no apparent sanction. The multiple flags on Fischnaller’s helmet were a tribute to all the past Olympic venues he competed at, including the 2014 Sochi Games. Heraskevych also said he and other Ukrainian athletes had seen Russian flags in the stands at Olympic venues, which were supposedly banned by the IOC.
Russian athletes have not competed under their country’s flag at the Winter Olympics since 2014, when Russia hosted a doping-tainted Games in Sochi. Some instead compete as “neutral athletes,” without any flags. Ukrainian Sports Minister last week decried the actions of the IOC According to his government, the body could soon ease restrictions on Russian athletes.
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“I told him that from the outside, from what I read in the media, it seems like you are playing with Russia,” Heraskevych said.
On Tuesday, the International Paralympic Committee said that the Russian National Paralympic Committee had been allocated six places for the upcoming Games which will take place from March 6 to 15.
The IOC president said she could work with him
After his meeting with Heraskevych and his father, Coventry said they asked him what the IOC could do for Ukraine – specifically to address the urgent needs of its residents, such as generators, due to the country’s deeply disrupted power grid.
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She said she told Heraskevych she would be “more than happy to work with him and his father to come out and ask leaders and governments to try to help them.”
“In recent years, the IOC has given more than $10 million to Ukraine, to the NOC, to sport, to the athletes. We want to continue doing that,” she said.
The IOC has not said whether it will contribute directly to Heraskevych’s new initiative.
No regrets about his decision
For Heraskevych, his refusal to move came at a high cost. He started training in skeleton with his father in 2014, when the sport practically did not exist in Ukraine. Without an established infrastructure or senior teammates to lean on, he said, they had to find their own way.
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Heraskevych probably would have been a legitimate contender for a medal in Cortina: he finished no worse than sixth in any of his five official training races in the build-up to the Olympic race, and had the fastest time in one of those races – although it was also a race where some contenders, like gold medalist Matt Weston of Great Britain, sat down to rest.
“It really hurts, and we’ve been working on this for a very long time,” he said.
Ultimately, Heraskevych does not regret his decision to compete with his helmet. He said the portraits on display represent only a fraction of the “countless” friends and acquaintances he lost during the war.
“A lot of people I knew left us way too early, at the age when they should have started families and built their lives,” he said. “Instead, we now have death in their place – and it hurts.”
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AP Sports Writer Tim Reynolds in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, contributed to this report.
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PA Winter Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics
