Team GB’s Matt Weston leads golden charge as skeleton rivals unite behind banned Ukrainian

Britain’s Matt Weston is poised for the podium after setting the pace in the opening two runs of the men’s skeleton competition at the Winter Olympics

This was the race that will always be remembered for the one man who didn’t make the start. Exactly 21 minutes before the men’s skeleton was scheduled to begin the International Olympic Commitee put out its press release announcing that it had revoked the Olympic accreditation of the Ukrainian slider Vladyslav Heraskevych after he refused to compete without his helmet decorated with the images of his fellow athletes who have been killed during the Russian invasion of his country. It was so late the two British competitors, Matt Weston and Marcus Wyatt said they didn’t even find out about it until after they had finished.

By then, the news had already spread around the world, and the one Ukrainian journalist present, Stanislav Oroshkevych, from tribuna.com, found he was suddenly surrounded by colleagues from Germany, Britain, Japan, and a dozen other countries, all asking him for public comment on what was going on. Soon, the Ukrainian press attache arrived to save him and announced that Heraskevych would come to give an impromptu press conference himself. The photos of Heraskevych standing behind the barriers near the finish, his helmet tucked under his arm, addressing a crowd of 30 journalists, will be one of the iconic images of these Olympics.

By then the race was underway, so Heraskevych had to speak over the sound of the roaring crowd, and of his fellow sledders as they came hurtling towards the finish. The media still had their backs to the action on the track.

Weston turned in back-to-back track records, 56.21sec, and 55.88sec, and he has a lead of three-tenths of a second over Germany’s Axel Jungk, who won the silver medal in Beijing four years ago. He couldn’t be better placed to win Great Britain a much sought-after medal ahead of the final two heats on Friday evening.

“There’s still things that I can improve on, which I think is an extremely lucky and fortunate place to be,” said Weston. “The fact that I want to improve, I want to chase, there’s still things that I can get time out of. There’s definitely some bits to clean up, and that is a great place to be.”

Weston is pretty close to Heraskevych. “I chat to him all the time,” he said. “He’s a big personality within the circuit.” And while he said he didn’t want to be drawn into the rights and wrongs of the IOC’s decision, he felt for him on a personal level. “I’m really, really sad that he’s missed out on being able to compete. I think that’s gutting. He’d been sliding really, really well in training and I think he was going to put down some really, really good results. So I’m sad he didn’t get to race.” A lot of the other racers said similar things.

“He’s a man with strong values, and I have a lot of respect for that,” said Israel’s Jared Firestone. “Hearing about it beforehand made me feel emotional for him, but ultimately it’s not our decision.”

“He stands on whatever he believes in, and that’s something that we see from him year after year,” said the USA’s Daniel Barefoot. “So when I heard that he was going to be trying the helmet no matter what, I was like: ‘He’s telling the truth, he’s not going to back off on race day.’ I was thinking that maybe they would let him do it. When I found out that he was immediately disqualified, I was shocked. It’s sad. He’s one of the best sliders in the world and obviously he believed that that was a more important cause than sliding.”

Heraskevych said that the Latvian team had also offered him their support by lodging an official protest to the IOC. “I know what’s happening and I’m really disappointed with the IOC’s decision,” said their sledder Emils Indriksons. “It’s so sad that this is happening, you should be able to express yourself how you want, and I don’t think that Heraskevych crossed any lines.”

Heraskevych will live with the fallout from this. He said he was contemplating taking his case to the court of arbitration for sport, but of course the thoughts of Indriksons, Barefoot, Weston, and all the rest of them will soon move on.

There are two races left to go, and three medals to be won. There were dozens of British fans watching, dozens of Germans cheering loudly for Jungk, too, and just the one small band of Ukrainians, a family who had come to support Heraskevych. They had bought an enormous Ukrainian flag with them. The IOC’s stewards had told them to take it down because it was so big they were worried it was going to obscure the view of anyone who wanted to concentrate on the sport.