At the Winter Olympics in Milan-Cortina, sport was supposed to speak the universal language of competition, resilience, peace. Instead, it is now a helmet that makes the noise.

Vladyslav Heraskevych, Ukrainian athlete and symbol of a generation that grew up amidst war and Olympic dreams, was disqualified for wearing a helmet on which were imprinted images of Ukrainian athletes killed after the Russian invasion. Not a political slogan or a direct appeal against the Russian opponent, but faces. Faces of colleagues, friends, young athletes who fell not on the track but under the bombs that destroyed, forever, their Olympic dreams.

The International Olympic Committee justified the decision by referring to the principle of political neutrality enshrined in the Olympic Charter, which prohibits demonstrations and propaganda of a political nature during competitions. A historic rule, reiterated several times over the years, designed to protect the Games from ideological instrumentalisation.

Yet, in this case, the widespread feeling is that the line between neutrality and humanity has suddenly become thin. And hypocritical.

Olympic neutrality and memory in war

The IOC has always defended the idea that sport should remain a neutral space, a territory suspended from the world’s conflicts. It is a principle rooted in the modern Olympic ideal: to create a place where nations can meet without weapons, at least symbolically.

After the start of the war in Ukraine, the IOC itself had taken a stance with difficult decisions, limiting the participation of Russian and Belarusian athletes, and supporting economically and logistically Ukrainian athletes forced to train under air-raid sirens or far from home. Heraskevych, in the past, had been considered one of the faces of the sporting resistance that the Olympic movement had declared it wanted to protect.

For this very reason, the disqualification is particularly striking. This is not an isolated gesture against just any athlete, but against one whom the Olympic system had helped to support.

The crux is all here: was Heraskevych’s helmet political propaganda or an act of remembrance? The Olympic Charter prohibits political expressions on the competition field. But is remembering athletes who died in war a political or human act? Is it a stance against a state or an act of collective mourning?

The IOC’s response was formal: any direct reference to an ongoing conflict can be interpreted as a political message. Regulatory consistency demands uniformity.

Yet, the Olympics have never really been impervious to history. From the raised fists of Tommie Smith and John Carlos in 1968 to the refusal to compete against certain nations in other historical contexts, sport has always been shot through with reality. Pretending otherwise has never erased tensions: it has only made them more evident.

In this case, the question many are asking is whether the IOC did not sacrifice humanity on the altar of neutrality. Because Heraskevych’s helmet did not call for hatred, it did not call for sanctions, it did not launch slogans: it recalled names, faces, broken stories of athletes who dreamed of treading Olympic fields and tracks.

The precedent of Milan-Cortina and the risk of silence

Can absolute neutrality turn into indifference? Is it possible to defend the idea of sport as a neutral space without denying the right to pain?

There is an obvious paradox: the Olympic movement financially supports the war-affected athletes, implicitly acknowledging the existence of the conflict and its consequences, but asks them not to show its most painful signs on the competition field.

The disqualification of Heraskevych opens a complex precedent. If one allows the expression of memory linked to a conflict, where does one draw the line? If one bans everything, one risks turning the athlete into a neutral body, devoid of biography, without history.

The Milan-Cortina Olympics could have been an opportunity to reaffirm that sport is not a stranger to the world, but can be a space of dignity and remembrance. Instead, the choice was to rigidly apply the norm.

One question remains.

Perhaps the IOC feared a domino effect, the widespread politicisation of the Games. Perhaps it wanted to prevent further tensions in an already fragile context. But one question remains difficult to ignore: in trying to protect Olympic universality, has the Committee lost something of its humanity?

Heraskevych did not change the outcome of a race. He did not alter the sporting balance. He took a piece of his wounded country with him.

And today, more than the disqualification of an athlete, the silence imposed on a memory weighs heavily.