The owner of Ukrainian football club Shakhtar Donetsk has donated more than $200,000 to skeleton racer Vladyslav Heraskevych after the athlete was disqualified from the Milano Cortina Winter Games before competing over the use of a helmet depicting Ukrainian athletes killed in the war with Russia, the club said on Tuesday.
The 27-year-old Heraskevych was disqualified last week when the International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation jury ruled that imagery on the helmet — depicting athletes killed since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 — breached rules on athletes' expression at the Games.
He then lost an appeal at the Court of Arbitration for Sport hours before the final two runs of his competition, having missed the first two runs due to his disqualification.
Heraskevych had been allowed to train with the helmet that displayed the faces of 24 dead Ukrainian athletes for several days in Cortina d'Ampezzo where the sliding center is, but the International Olympic Committee then warned him a day before his competition started that he could not wear it there.
“Vlad Heraskevych was denied the opportunity to compete for victory at the Olympic Games, yet he returns to Ukraine a true winner," Shakhtar President Rinat Akhmetov said in a club statement.
"The respect and pride he has earned among Ukrainians through his actions are the highest reward. At the same time, I want him to have enough energy and resources to continue his sporting career, as well as to fight for truth, freedom and the remembrance of those who gave their lives for Ukraine," he said.
The amount is equal to the prize money Ukraine pays athletes who win a gold medal at the Games.
The case dominated headlines early on at the Olympics, with IOC President Kirsty Coventry meeting Heraskevych on Thursday morning at the sliding venue in a failed last-minute attempt to broker a compromise.
The IOC suggested he wear a black armband and display the helmet before and after the race, but said using it in competition breached rules on keeping politics off fields of play. Heraskevych also earned praise from Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
