This has been a week of mourning.
On Tuesday, a mass shooting at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School in northeastern British Columbia killed eight people, including five children. A small community of 2,400, where the mayor says he doesn’t call residents “residents,” he calls them “family” was shattered in minutes. Canada lowered its flags. The nation wept. And on Saturday, at our weekly Stand with Ukraine gathering in Kamloops, we will have a space for them too, because grief does not recognize borders, and the loss of children to violence is a language every heart understands, no matter the distance.
Today, on the other side of the world, another act of silencing unfolded. At the Cortina Sliding Centre in Italy, Ukrainian skeleton racer Vladyslav Heraskevych was disqualified from the 2026 Winter Olympics, roughly 45 minutes before his race, for refusing to remove a helmet painted with the black-and-white portraits of 22 Ukrainian athletes and sports figures killed by Russia’s war.
No slogans. No text. No political symbols. Just faces. Just people. And the IOC decided that remembering them was not allowed.
Every Photo Is a Person
Here is what struck me as I researched and wrote the report that accompanies this post: every single portrait on that helmet is a life. Not a symbol. Not a statistic. A person with a story.
Dmytro Sharpar, a 25-year-old figure skater from Kharkiv who performed in ice shows before volunteering for the front. Killed near Bakhmut. Yevhen Malyshev, a 19-year-old biathlete killed defending Kharkiv just five days after the invasion began — nine days before his 20th birthday. Karina Bakhur, a 17-year-old kickboxing champion struck by shrapnel while running toward a shelter during Russian shelling. She died 18 days before her 18th birthday. Viktoriia Ivashko, a 9-year-old judoka who had just won her first gold medal. She and her mother were killed near a bomb shelter that was reportedly locked. On International Children’s Day.
Seven of the 22 were children. The youngest was nine. The oldest was 42.
Some volunteered for the Armed Forces and were killed in combat. Other children were simply in the wrong place when Russian missiles, bombs, and shells tore through their homes, their schools, their cities. Entire families were destroyed: the Diachenko family in Mariupol, the Perehudova family in Mariupol, the Zui family in Mariupol. All gone.
The full report, Fallen Athletes, Silenced Tributes: A Biographical Record of the 22 Ukrainian Athletes and Sports Figures on Vladyslav Heraskevych’s Banned Olympic Helmet, documents each of these 22 lives in detail. Their athletic achievements. Their dreams. The circumstances of their deaths. The sources that tell their stories. I wrote it because these faces deserve names, and these names deserve stories, and these stories deserve to be told, especially when the IOC has decided they should be hidden.
The Bitter Irony
While the IOC disqualified Heraskevych for remembering the dead, 13 Russian athletes competed at these same Games under the Olympic flag as “Individual Neutral Athletes.” Neutral. As if neutrality is possible when your country is waging the largest war in Europe since 1945. As if you can separate the athlete from the nation whose military has killed more than 650 Ukrainian athletes and coaches since February 2022.
IOC President Kirsty Coventry wept as she announced the disqualification, saying through tears: “No one, no one — especially me — is disagreeing with the messaging.” And yet the decision stood. Honour is not allowed. The aggressors get the Olympic flag. The games continue.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha called it “a moment of shame.” President Zelenskyy said it plainly: “Sport shouldn’t mean amnesia, and the Olympic movement should help stop wars, not play into the hands of aggressors.”
Mourning Together
I keep thinking about how this week has braided together. In Tumbler Ridge, a community buries its children and a teacher. In Ukraine, missiles continue to fall on cities where children sleep. At our weekly gathering in Kamloops, the same gathering we have held every Saturday since February 24, 2022, we carry all of this. The flags. The candles. The names. It is all connected by the same thread: people who should still be alive, and the refusal to let their memory be erased.
Heraskevych said it best: “Because of their sacrifice, we are able to compete here as a team. I will not betray them.”
He didn’t betray them. He stood for them. And when the IOC took away his race, he said simply: “This is the price of our dignity.”
The report is available to read and share. Every photo on that helmet has a name. Every name has a story. I invite you to read them, because the IOC may have silenced the helmet on the field of play, but they cannot silence the truth.
The games will continue. So will we.
Here is the link to the full report: https://krasun.ca/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/heraskevych_helmet_report_apa_verified.pdf
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