IOC President bursts into tears after skeleton racer Heraskevych's disqualification
"Nobody — and certainly not me — is against this message."
Ukrainian skeleton racer Vladyslav Heraskevych was disqualified from participating in the Olympics because of his helmet, which featured 20 photographs of Ukrainian athletes who died in the war.
For the IOC, this was a violation of Rule 50 of the Olympic Charter: it prohibits political, religious, or personal demonstrations in the competition area.
The consequence for the skeleton racer was being barred from starting at the Olympics. This decision apparently weighed heavily on IOC President Kirsty Coventry. The former Olympic champion personally met with the athlete in a last-ditch effort to resolve the stalemate, BILD reports.
"It wasn't planned for me to be here at all. But I felt it was very important to speak with him personally," she said and emphasized: "Nobody — and certainly not me — is against this message. It's a powerful message, a message of remembrance and commemoration."
The problem wasn't the statement itself, but the place where it was made: "The difficulty was finding a solution for the competition area. Unfortunately, we were unable to find that solution," Coventry explained with a tremor in her voice.
She really wanted Heraskevych to still start: "I truly wanted to see him at the start. It was an emotional morning."
The IOC offered the Ukrainian athlete to display his memorial helmet before and after the race. During the competition itself, he would have been allowed to wear a black armband.
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