‘He’s won the medal of our hearts’: What slider’s disqualification for honoring fallen athletes means to Ukrainians

By Dana O’Neil, CNN

Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy (CNN) — The Ukrainian flag wrapped around her shoulders and its colors painted on her left cheek, Olha Scherhyna stood near the top of the Cortina Curling Center and pointed her phone at the big board announcing the start list for the men’s skeleton.

Minutes earlier, the International Olympic Committee had announced that Ukrainian slider Vladyslav Heraskevych had been disqualified from the men’s skeleton for insisting that he would wear a helmet on which he depicted athletes who had been killed in the war with Russia. As the starters scrolled in front of Scherhyna on the board, a red DNS stood next to Heraskevych at the same time an announcer said he would not start.

Using a translate app on her phone to share her opinions, Scherhyna needed no help to convey her emotions. She brought her fists to her eyes, to indicate sobbing, before real tears fell down her cheeks. She then reached into the pocket of her white jacket and pulled out a black armband, motioning to me to tie it around her jacket.

On her app she wrote, “For Ukraine, he is already a winner.’’

The IOC and Heraskevych have been in a standoff since Tuesday, when, during a training run, the slider wore his helmet honoring those slain since Russia invaded Ukraine. The organization said it violated its guidelines on athlete expression. Rule 50.2 of the Olympic Charter, which provides for the “protection of neutrality,” states that “no kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda is permitted in any Olympic sites, venues or other areas.’’ He has appealed the decision.

Heraskevych countered that his helmet was no different than the photograph that American figure skater Maxim Naumov showed of his parents killed in a plane crash, and was merely a way to memorialize his peers. The IOC dug in, suggesting instead that Heraskevych wear a black armband; the slider stood his ground, telling CNN, “I believe IOC doesn’t have enough black bands to memorialize all the athletes who was killed in the war.’’

The IOC hoped for a compromise, saying it would reach out to Heraskevych before official competition began but the Ukrainian, who served as his country’s flag bearer at the Opening Ceremonies here, made clear he wasn’t budging. An hour before the skeleton heats were to begin, he wrote on X, “I never wanted a scandal with the IOC, and I did not create it.” He went on to add that he requested that the organization “lift the ban on the use of the ‘Memory Helmet.’”

IOC president Kristy Coventry traveled to Cortina on Thursday moning for the explicit purpose of meeting with Heraskevych and his father, Mykhailo. She said she empathized and respected Heraskevych’s desire to memorialize his peers.

“No one, no one – especially me – is disagreeing with the messaging,’’ she said. “The messaging is a powerful message of remembrance, it’s a message of memory and no one is disagreeing with that. … We’re not making a judgement on whether the messaging is political or not political.”

Instead, she said, the decision is a direct outcome of the Athletes Commission recommendations in 2021 that limited athletes’ opportunities to express their views “on the field of play prior to the start of competition.’’

“It’s because we had so many athletes come up to us and say, ‘If you open that up, how do you keep me safe?’” Coventry said. “How do you stop me from being used by others to send a message that I don’t agree with?’ That’s why these rules are in place. It’s to ensure the safety of everybody.’’

The decision, perhaps complicated at the bureaucratic level, was not hard to decipher for Ukrainians. President Volodymyr Zelensky praised Heraskevych on X, saying, “The truth cannot be inconvenient, inappropriate or called a ‘political demonstration at a sporting event.’ It is a reminder to the whole world of what modern Russia is. And this is what reminds everyone of the global role of sports and the historic mission of the Olympic movement itself – it is all about peace for the sake of like. Ukraine remains faithful to this. Russia proves otherwise.’’ He later awarded the country’s Order of Freedom to Heraskevych.

Ukrainians who came to the Cortina Sliding Center to support Heraskevych echoed their president’s sentiments.

Iryna, who asked not to use her last name, left with her husband and son on the fifth day of the war to settle in her husband’s home country of Italy. She hasn’t been home in four years. Members of her family, however, remain there.

“They are freezing in their homes,’’ she said. “Some don’t have electricity. Some don’t have heating.’’

To her, Heraskevych’s helmet is a way to remind people that Ukraine is still at war and what the costs are. On it, he shows boxer Pavlo Ischenko, hockey player Oleskiy Loginov, diver Mykyta Kozubenko, actor and athlete Ivan Koneno and shooter Oleksiy Khabarov, who were all killed in action, and 14-year-old weightlifter Arina Perehudova, who was killed in a shelling in Mariupol, and 20-year-old ballet dancer Daria Kurdel, who was killed by a shrapnel wound during a shelling in Kryvyi Rih, according to published reports.

“This is unacceptable,’’ Iryna said. “The war is still going. These people were killed. What else can they tell you?”

Natalia Khaichyk was walking up the hill at the sliding center to find a place to view the skeleton competition when she learned of Heraskevych’s disqualification. She had come to Cortina from Lviv, Ukraine, to watch him compete. She, too, wore her Ukrainian flag around her shoulders.

Heraskevych stood atop the standings through five training runs.

“This is even bigger than a medal,’’ Khaichyk said. “He’s won the medal of our hearts.’’

Outside the center, just as the competition was set to begin, a photographer caught Heraskevych’s father, Mykhailo, bent over the waist, overcome with emotion.

On X, however, his son did not back down. Heraskevych reposted an image of himself preparing to slide during his training run. His eyes face the camera, and the images of the slain athletes shine from his helmet. “

“This,’’ he wrote on X, “is price of our dignity.’’

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