Skeleton racer sacrificed his dream of winning a medal and succeeded in putting the horrors of the war in Ukraine back on the agenda
To be a Olympic-class skeleton racer requires extraordinary guts and impeccable nerve, as the corners loom and then whoosh past at frightening speed. So did anybody really believe that Ukraine’s Vladyslav Heraskevych would lose his when the world’s eyes were upon him?
Not the International Olympic Committee, who flipped between threats of expulsion and sweet talk over the last fortnight, without coming close to changing his mind. And certainly not those of us who have spoken and messaged Heraskevych, and found a man utterly prepared to sacrifice his dream of winning a Winter Olympic medal for a higher purpose.
In public and private his message was the same: he would not back down. And if the IOC barred from competing in his “helmet of memory”, which commemorates some of the 600 Ukrainian athletes and coaches killed by Russian bombs and bullets since 2022, he would accept his fate.
And when the moment came, shortly before 8.30am on Thursday, he met it with a powerful but resolute message: “This is price of our dignity,” alongside a photo of his helmet.
