Winter Olympics 2026: CAS backs IOC in Ukraine war helmet row as Heraskevych ban upheld

Ukrainian athlete Vladislav Heraskevych has been banned from the Olympic skeleton competition in a dispute over his helmet with pictures of fellow athletes killed in the war. Photo / Getty Images

Ukrainian skeleton racer Vladyslav Heraskevych has lost his appeal against his disqualification from the Winter Olympics for wearing a helmet adorned with pictures of the Ukrainian war dead.

In the biggest controversy of the Milan-Cortina Games so far, Heraskevych was barred from his event on Thursday after refusing to ditch the helmet that features pictures of Ukrainian sportsmen and women killed since Russian forces invaded in 2022.

Gestures of a political nature during competition are forbidden under the Olympic charter.

Heraskevych, 27, took his case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) and put his arguments for over two hours in Milan on Friday, telling reporters: “I hope truth will prevail and still I know that I was innocent.”

But CAS, sport’s top court, said it had denied Heraskevych’s appeal “against the International Bobsleigh & Skeleton Federation (IBSF) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC)”.

CAS Secretary-General Matthieu Reeb told reporters after the hearing that the court had “found that freedom of expression is guaranteed at the Olympic Games, but not on the field of play, which is a sacred principle”.

Reeb added that Annett Rombach, the German arbitrator who examined the appeal, “wished to state that she is fully sympathetic to Mr Heraskevych’s commemoration and to his attempt to raise awareness for the grief and devastation suffered by the Ukrainian people, and Ukrainian athletes because of the war”.

However, she concluded that Heraskevych’s helmet did violate the IOC’s Athlete Expression Guidelines.

The decision to disqualify Heraskevych drew a stinging response from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who said the “Olympic movement should help stop wars, not play into the hands of aggressors”.

The IOC had tried to find a compromise with Heraskevych, allowing him to wear the helmet in training runs and when talking to the media and proposed that he wear a black armband in competition, but he refused to back down.

Kirsty Coventry, the IOC president and a former Olympic gold medallist in swimming, met with Heraskevych, who was one of Ukraine’s flag bearers in the opening ceremony, early on Thursday in an unsuccessful attempt to persuade him to change his mind.

“My conversation with Vlad and his dad yesterday was a very good conversation, a very respectful conversation and you know, it was a time really for me and him to speak as athletes,” Coventry said on Friday.

“That was really important for me and I think for him and I shared with him yesterday how the process went.”

But on the issue of political messages, “the rules are the rules as they stand today”, Coventry said.

- Agence France-Presse