Vladyslav's Olympic Victory: Helmet Of Memory Leaves No Hiding Place For Putin's Terror On Ukraine
Thanks to a Ukrainian skeleton racer, the Russian regime is back in the X-ray room for all the right reasons: murder of Ukrainians, including 660 athletes, dispatching more than a million Russian soldiers to their deaths, and annihilation of the infrastructure of a neighbouring sovereign country
Sport exists and must operate in a political world, the swastika-soaked stadia of the Berlin 1936 Olympic Games, the wipe out of WWI and WWII, the boycotts of 1976, 1980 and 1984, among others, having given us all plenty of references to turn to should we wish to understand why Olympic Charter Rule 50 and that part of a bye-law relevant to the disqualification of Vladyslav Heraskevych and his "helmet of memory" read as follows:
50 Advertising, demonstrations, propaganda
1 - Except as may be authorised by the IOC Executive Board on an exceptional basis, no form of advertising or other publicity shall be allowed in and above the stadia, venues and other competition areas which are considered as part of the Olympic sites. Commercial installations and advertising signs shall not be allowed in the stadia, venues or other sports grounds.
2 - No kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda is permitted in any Olympic sites, venues or other areas.
Bye-law to Rule 50
1 No form of publicity or propaganda, commercial or otherwise, may appear on persons, on sportswear, accessories or, more generally, on any article of clothing or equipment whatsoever worn or used by all competitors, team officials, other team personnel and all other participants in the Olympic Games, except for the identification – as defined in paragraph 8 below – of the manufacturer of the article or equipment concerned, provided that such identification shall not be marked conspicuously for advertising purposes.
The IOC Executive Board shall adopt guidelines that provide further details on the implementation of this principle.
Any violation of this Bye-law 1 and the guidelines adopted hereunder may result in disqualification of the person or delegation concerned, or withdrawal of the accreditation of the person or delegation concerned, without prejudice to further measures and sanctions which may be pronounced by the IOC Executive Board or Session.
A quick reminder of the meaning of words:
Propaganda - key meaning:
- information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote a particular cause, doctrine, or point of view.
Publicity - three key meanings:
- notice or attention given to someone or something by the media
- the giving out of information about a product, person, or company for advertising or promotional purposes
- material or information used for advertising or promotional purposes.
Now tell me if you truly believe that genuine photographs of deceased athletes - the circumstances of their passing in context and as obvious as the choice the skeleton racer made when he did what he did with the world's super troupers turned on - are facts, or whether they constitute bias, doctrine, opinion, the use of misleading material?
Are images of citizens of a sovereign country slaughtered by an aggressor and invader propaganda or truth? Do those images meet any of the three definitions of 'publicity' above?
If you answer 'no', 'not under the circumstances' or 'not intentionally, but it's complicated and there are reasons why sport really ought to keep politics at bay", we'll find common ground.
If you answer 'yes', then I refer you to the hypocrisy of an unsustainable position that is guaranteed to place athletes in one corner, governors and in-house athlete commission folk repeating the party line rather than representing athletes in the other.
Why? Simple: quite clearly, as we tune into Milan-Cortina in the year 2026, we're looking at a case of blazers behaving like Roman rulers who used gladiators the way the modern athlete is being used: entertainment as a form of propaganda.
There was no such thing as one rule for all in Ancient Rome. They worked on the fundamental Roman legal principle of veni contra factum proprium. It's a perfect description of Gianni Infantino's behaviour and the acceptance of it by fellow IOC members:
Craig Lord
That latin means "no one may set himself in contradiction to his own previous conduct". Spot on for Olympic leaders: a Charter that tells athletes that there will be 'no politics' while leaving leaders free to behave as they always have done, positively swimming, nay bathing and steeping, in politics.
As this exchange on social notes, the pictures of deceased Ukrainians are by no means the only events in Olympic world - and during a Games - that can be interpreted the way the IOC interpreted Heraskevych's way of honouring athletes killed by Putin's war machine, one, lest we forget, that has also sent more than a million Russian soldiers to their deaths on a scam mission to rd a neighbour of its 'Nazis' (now, there's a steaming pile of propaganda, if the IOC should ever need a few contemporary examples to help it navigate its own doublespeak as LA2028 looms on a horizon where day will dawn 80 years after 1984 was published in 1948):
In case you hadn't seen the story of the image of a helmet in the bottom right photo of the compilation to the left, it shows a rear view of Italian snowboarder Roland Fischnaller, a Russian flag on display among others on his helmet. There were no consequences for the athlete, despite all Russian national symbols and identifiers having been banned by the IOC.
In posts on his social, Heraskevych noted the Israeli skeleton racer Jared Firestone, who posted a video saying he would wear a kippah with the names of the Olympians who were taken hostage and killed during the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich; U.S. skater Maxim Naumov, who lost his parents in a plane crash in Washington, D.C., last year and honoured them by displaying a photo after he competed on Tuesday; and Great Britain skier Gus Kenworthy, who posted a photo on social with the words “f-ck ice” apparently urinated in the snowed en route to competing in Milan in reference to the action of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which has included the deaths of American citizens.
“If this isn’t discrimination, then what should I call it?” wrote Heraskevych, who accused the IOC of “double standards”. Not hard to see why. This piece by Lizzy Yarnold makes the fair-play case for the athlete
Lizzy Yarnold
The POLITICS
The headline on an analysis of Russia's slaughterous war on Ukraine states succinctly what neither Putin nor his admirer Trump would care to admit:
The analysis was published on January 27 ...
- a week after the inauguration as Donald Trump's 45th President of the United States, - a month and one day before the world woke up to a monstrous shift in the American government's approach to 'democracy', 'dictatorship' as Trump and his vice-president J.D. Vance sparked a breakdown in political friendships and relationships around the world when they falsely told Ukraine President Vlodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office at the White House that he had 'no cards' (for those who may not recall the moment, see the video below, the grenade chucked by Vance - just as he chucked one in Munich and blew up decades of friendships between the US and European democracies - from about 42 minutes into this meeting, with about 7 minutes to walkout)
- 10 months after the International Criminal Court (ICC) issues an arrest warrant issued for Putin for the war crimes he stood accused of;
- 10 days before Trump issued sanctions, not against Putin or any other aggressors in wars, but against the ICC after its November 2025 issue of an arrest warrant for three other leaders, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, and Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif, all of whom, the court suggested, bore "criminal responsibility for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity".
So, no question about t, regardless of who you agree with, who not, or whether you are 'neutral', the above constitutes politics at the very deep end, the place where more than a million lives are lost and economies destroyed as the talking continues and the pretence that peace can be had if you give the bully Putin an inch of all that land he's stolen and suggest he can have what he wants without ageing to reparation costs in full, the return of kidnapped children and much else many an expert says he is highly unlikely to agree to.
Where does sport come in? Silence and adherence to the Olympic Charter? Not quite. Kirsty Coventry - whose tears are understandable if you forget she now has the power to do something about it, crocodile if you don't see her do something about it, and soon - is correct when she says athletes are free to make their protests outside the Olympic arena, without consequence, but when the lights are on and the world's cameras are trained on the biggest moment n the careers of Olympians, an omertà must descend on anything the IOC deems as political.
When the IOC president and 2004-2008 Olympic 200m backstroke champion says she spoke to the athlete as an athlete not a president, she actually means 'an in-house athlete', not one of those represented by Global Athlete, an organisation whose head, Rob Koehler makes much clearer representation of the athlete not the athlete in the framework of a machinery that has a deleterious impact on the experience of athletes.
In the wake of the mass China 23-go-free 'contamination' controversy, we might also expect to see more of these kind of headlines, inbound which an Italian biathlete who tested positive is able to compete at a home Olympic Games on the basis of what, at least so far at the surface, seems to be a similar argument to the one used to no avail by young Russian skater Kamila Valieva at the last Winter Games. She may c compete, but not Vlad because of his helmet of memory.
The eye of the falcon having alighted on Vladyslav's helmet, the bigger question is this: who is the falconer?
Meaning: if we trace back to the source of pressure where do we find ourselves. Well, in my opinion, we';re in the same Oval Office where Trump met Zelensky in a session that ended in a shift in world order and trust, and where Trump met the emperor of sycophancy -make that sicko-fancy, Gianni Infantino, the IOC member who showed immense disrespect for all the Nobel Prizes ever awarded when this unfolded (complete with a grown man giving an Oscars speech after placing a participants medal in the 7-year-old egg-and-spoon race round his own neck):
Yes, that's politics, too - and it should play no part in sport or be allowed anywhere near athletes, forever and ever, Amen!
Given the price Heraskevych has been forced to pay, let alone the price paid by those he mourns, Coventry must now save her tears and direct her level head and emotion towards her fellow IOC member Infantino. He deserves more than a warning. Given that football at the Summer Games is a youth event, perhaps the IOC boss should ask the FIFA boss to stay away from LA2028 altogether, as a like-for-like penalty with that meted out on the skeleton athlete the week.
In the mix of it all are a few people named in the Epstein Files, others who are supporters of the Enhanced Games; in some cases people who belong to both those groups - and, perhaps, for anyone involved in the doping-friendly project, anything that knocks trust in the IOC is a thumbs up, another reason why Infantino and his ridiculous 'peace prize' were inappropriate, unwelcome and worthy of inquiry into whether the whole episode brought Olympic sport into disrepute.
An inquiry into the FIFA boss?
Yes, Orwellian pigs may fly, but that's the point, and always will be for as long as IOC governors ape Napoleon and athletes ape Benjamin the Donkey (for those who never read Animal Farm - I commend it to you - Benjamin watches the pigs, particularly Napoleon, abuse their power, alter the Seven Commandments, and create a totalitarian regime, but he does nothing to intervene: instead, holds a cynical worldview, frequently remarking that "donkeys live a long time" and that life will go on as it always has - badly."
Vladyslav Heraskevych has proven he is no Benjamin the Donkey.
He was never going to exchange the 'helmet of memory' he wore in practice for a black armband in competition, as suggested by the IOC, somewhat cynically: what, for instance, was the athlete then supposed to do when walking through the media mixed zone after competing, when confronted by journalists asking 'what's the black arm band for' (as if we don't know)? Cue truth.
Is that ok? Or is it just the broadcasters of the world that must show the truth but speak nothing of it? And does the need for such questions not inform the IOC about its own risk of promoting propaganda? In this piece...
Sean Ingle
Sean Ingle notes:
I am not convinced the IOC was doing Russia’s propaganda for them, as Heraskevych and the Global Athlete organisation has claimed. But it was certainly a terrible look to ban an athlete for wanting to pay homage to his friends, while his country is being hit with ballistic missiles and you have recently made cooing noises to Russia.
Spot on. While I don't see the IOC deliberately doing Putin's bidding, neither do I see Heraskevych dong anything other than paying homage to murdered friends at a moment when the IOC has put a smile on Putin's face bye removing the pressure that Russian athletes - aka citizens - should be putting on their political leader t0 get the hell out of Ukraine and concentrate on improving life for Russians.
Sean, in Milan, notes the insider who suggested that if the “helmet of memory” had been approved, the IOC could have potentially opened up Pandora’s box and set a precedent for athletes to protest about every conflict and skirmish out there.
That excuse is kicked into touch, however, by this from Ingle:
But perhaps there was a way. After all, if the IOC was able to set up an independent panel to decide whether Russians could compete as Authorised Neutral Athletes, why could they not have done the same for Heraskevych and other such cases?
Indeed! The irony of it all is this: while Heraskevych has lost his battle to compete ... and now, hs CAS appeal:
Jens Weinreich
... his helmet of memory will become a lasting memory in the annals of Olympic history, the gold for spreading a PR message on the costs of Russian brutality his and his alone, IOC leaders waged away in the rounds of their own hypocrisy.
