Ukranian skeleton racer Vladyslav Heraskevych claims the International Olympic Committee has banned his helmet featuring images of people killed in the war in his home country, in a decision that “breaks my heart”.
The 26-year-old wore the helmet during a Winter Olympics training session in Cortina, and had promised before the Games to use the event as a platform to keep attention on the conflict.
The IOC is yet to confirm publicly if it has banned the helmet.
“The IOC has banned the use of my helmet at official training sessions and competitions,” said Heraskevych, who was a Ukraine flagbearer in Friday’s opening ceremony, on Instagram, external.
“A decision that simply breaks my heart. The feeling that the IOC is betraying those athletes who were part of the Olympic movement, not allowing them to be honoured on the sports arena where these athletes will never be able to step again.
“Despite precedents in modern times and in the past when the IOC allowed such tributes, this time they decided to set special rules just for Ukraine.”
Heraskevych told Reuters that many of those pictured on his helmet were athletes including teenage weightlifter Alina Peregudova, boxer Pavlo Ishchenko and ice hockey player Oleksiy Loginov, and stated some of them were his friends.
Heraskevych said Toshio Tsurunaga, the IOC representative in charge of communications between athletes, national Olympic committees and the IOC, had been to the athletes’ village to tell him.
“He said it’s because of rule 50,” Heraskevych told Reuters.
Rule 50.2 of the Olympic Charter states that “no kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda is permitted in any Olympic sites, venues or other areas”.
He said earlier on Monday that the IOC had contacted Ukraine’s Olympic Committee over the helmet.
The IOC said it had not received any official request to use the helmet in competition, which starts on 12 February.
Meanwhile, Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky thanked Heraskevych “for reminding the world of the price of our struggle” in a post on X, external.
The post continued: “This truth cannot be inconvenient, inappropriate, or called a ‘political demonstration at a sporting event’. It is a reminder to the entire world of what modern Russia is.”
Heraskevych, Ukraine’s first skeleton athlete, held up a ‘No War in Ukraine’ sign at the 2022 Beijing Olympics, days before Russia’s 2022 invasion of the country.
Rule 50.2 of the Olympic Charter states: “No kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda is permitted in any Olympic sites, venues or other areas.”
Heraskevych had said he intended to respect Olympic rules which prohibit political demonstrations at venues while still raising awareness about the war in Ukraine at the Games.
Following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 athletes from Russia and Belarus were largely banned from international sport, but there has since been a gradual return to competition.
The IOC cleared 13 athletes from Russia, external to compete as Individual Neutral Athletes (AINs) in Milan-Cortina.
BBC Sport has approached the IOC for comment.
