A Ukrainian athlete was banned for his helmet. How does the IOC enforce its rules on political statements?

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The Olympics have long been a platform for political posturing, with countries boycotting or being banned over geopolitical conflicts. 

But the International Olympic Committee (IOC) says the politics should stop once the games begin — keeping the competitions and podiums free from political “interference.”

But what constitutes interference can be complicated.

Even after the IOC on Thursday banned Ukraine’s Vladyslav Heraskevych — for wearing a helmet adorned with pictures of war victims — president Kirsty Coventry teared up while explaining the decision, saying while the helmet broke the rules, she did not disagree with its “powerful” message.

Heraskevych, a skeleton competitor, defied the IOC after being told he couldn’t wear the helmet, which depicts Ukrainian athletes killed by Russia — a country that’s been barred from the Olympics since its 2022 invasion of Ukraine. 

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Why did the IOC ban Vladyslav Heraskevych helmet at the Winter Games?

Rule 50 has come into play as the IOC bans Vladyslav Heraskevych from wearing his helmet at the Winter Games.

While the decision prompted an outcry from Heraskevych’s teammates, an Olympic historian says it’s consistent with a strict interpretation of the rules. 

“On the one hand, it’s a memorial to fallen comrades. It’s also a pretty explicit political statement about the nature of that war,” said Bruce Kidd, a former Olympic runner and a professor emeritus at the University of Toronto, who writes about the history and political economy of sports.

Athletes are allowed to make political statements outside the field of play and ceremonies, including at news conferences and on social media. Some have taken advantage of that this year — notably, several American athletes who criticized their own country with anti-ICE messages.

But Heraskevych says the rules were applied unfairly to him, citing examples including Israeli skeleton athlete Jared Firestone, who wore a kippah bearing the names of the 11 Israeli athletes and coaches killed in an attack at the 1972 Games in Munich, Germany.

On the other hand, the IOC ordered this year’s two-person Haitian team to remove from their opening ceremony jackets the image of Toussaint Louverture, a former slave who was a leader in the Haitian Revolution some 200 years ago.

Kidd says enforcement of these rules, and defining what constitutes a political statement, can be complicated and sometimes unclear.

19th century origins

The no-politics rules go back to the origin of the modern Olympics.

In the 1890s, founder Baron Pierre de Coubertin envisioned the Olympics as part of a movement to foster global peace and understanding, Kidd says. Criticizing the politics of another country would undermine that effort. 

Yet some athletes “pushed those boundaries by speaking out, and other athletes, very subtly, made statements that were read by anybody who knew the signs as political statements,” he said.

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In one of the earliest and most dramatic examples, Irish track star Peter O’Connor — upset that he had to compete for Great Britain as Ireland didn’t have its own Olympic committee — climbed a 20-foot flagpole at the 1906 Athens Games to raise an Irish flag with the words “Erin Go Bragh,” or Ireland Forever.

The IOC didn’t punish him, though for other reasons it did retroactively downgrade those games from official Olympic recognition.

Perhaps the most famous example came at the 1968 Summer Games in Mexico City, when American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who finished first and third respectively, wore black gloves and held their fists in the air in a “Black Power” salute on the podium.

They were suspended from the U.S. team and forced to leave the Olympic Village.

Political statements have continued in recent years, if more quietly.

Canadian pentathlete Monica Pinette wore a Metis sash at the 2004 closing ceremonies in Athens, where she was the country’s only Indigenous competitor. But in 2008 in Beijing, she told the Globe and Mail she wouldn’t wearing it again because officials made it clear they would strictly enforce the rules around political symbolism.

Ethiopian marathon runner Feyisa Lilesa also got a talking to from the IOC, but avoided punishment, after he crossed his arms at the finish line during the 2016 Games in Rio, a gesture of protest showing solidarity with his Oromo people.

In 2020, the IOC allowed German women’s field hockey player Nike Lorenz to wear a rainbow-coloured band at the 2020 Tokyo Games to represent 2SLGBTQ+ solidarity, despite some saying it broke the rules.

Kidd says statements that don’t involve nation-state politics may be considered more acceptable, though he says enforcement through the years has been “full of contradictions.”

He says the games are meant to be played in the spirit of liberal values and respect for other people, and the main point of the politics ban is to strive to avoid expressions of hatred or contestation that could stir up state aggression. 

“Trying to include the entire world of sport is complicated enough. But then you throw in all of the differences and all of the conflicts around the world, and you try to govern that in a way that will enhance respect and understanding between people who hate each other,” Kidd said. 

“That’s a real challenge. And it’s incredibly difficult now, when there’s so much tension and xenophobia in the world.”