Vladyslav Heraskevych, 27-year-old Ukrainian skeleton racer, said days before the Winter Olympic Games in Milano-Cortina that he would use the Games as a platform to draw attention to the Ukraine war, while avoiding IOC's rules banning political, religious or racial demonstrations (he was nearly sanctioned four years ago when he displayed a banner reading 'No War in Ukraine' in Beijing 2022, days before the invasion).
And on Monday morning, during the first men's skeleton training, he wore a helmet displaying black and white images of athletes killed in Ukraine. "Some of them were my friends", Heraskevych said to Reuters, including Dmytro Sharpar, a figure skater who was killed during the war in 2024, and Yevhen Malyshev, who died in March 2022.
Heraskevych opposed to ICO allowing "neutral" Russian athletes
Speaking a week before the Games, Heraskevych was very critical with IOC's decision to allow individual Russian or Belarusian athletes to compete under the neutral flag, despite the still-standing ban to their origin countries. "For me it's questionable how you can consider an athlete neutral if he is fully financed by the government, if he is somehow attached to the federation, national federation, which is also part of propaganda", and suggested that only Russian or Belarusian athletes who fled the country and opposed the war should be allowed to enter under a refugee banner.
Heraskevych, who is also Ukraine's flag bearer in Milano-Cortina, will continue to train before the skeleton race first races take place on Thursday February 12.