Ukrainian Vladyslav Heraskevych is the most important athlete at the Olympics right now

Veteran sportswriter Richard Deitsch takes an international view of the Olympics.

The International Olympic Committee is not an organization that generally begs, but they are begging Vladyslav Heraskevych. They are begging the Ukrainian skeleton racer not to compete in a customized helmet showing the faces of more than 20 Ukrainian athletes and coaches killed since Russian invaded Ukraine in 2022. 

The IOC has said such an act would violate the Olympic rule on political statements and that the helmet would not be allowed in competition. Heraskevych wore the helmet for training Tuesday and Wednesday. 

“We will reiterate the many, many opportunities that he has to express his grief,” IOC spokesperson Mark Adams said Wednesday. “As we discussed before, he can do so on social media and press conferences in the mixed zone. So, we will try to talk to him about that and try to convince him … There are 130 conflicts going on in the world. We cannot have 130 different conflicts featured, no matter how terrible they are, on the field of play, during the actual competition.”

Heraskevych’s story is a mirror — it reflects the eternal deception of how sports and politics do not intersect. Of course they intersect, and they intersected when the IOC awarded the 2014 Winter Games to Vladimir Putin. 

WATCH | Will he or won’t he?:

Will Ukrainian skeleton racer still wear his banned helmet in competition?

CBC Sports’ Rob Pizzo spoke to Vladyslav Heraskevych’s coach, who gave an update on the ongoing situation.

It is a fluid situation and one that could change by the time you read this. Heat 1 of the men’s skeleton is scheduled for 3:30 a.m. ET on Thursday. The second heat begins at 5:08 a.m. ET. The gold medal run comes Friday.

Heraskevych did not enter these Games, his third Olympics, as a gold-medal favourite, but hitting the podium is a real possibility. He was ranked 11th in the world this season but was second-fastest Tuesday and fifth-best Monday. His story is picking up steam globally and he has effectively used the media, including his own, to shine light on what his helmet represents. 

There are many more famous athletes at the Olympics but right now there is no more important one. The collision is coming between Heraskevych and the IOC. How it plays out is anyone’s guess. 

Your First Week Olympics star

The expectation heading into the Milano-Cortina Games was that Switzerland’s Marco Odermatt would announce himself to the greater world as the singular star of men’s alpine skiing. It seemed like an easy bet. Odermatt, dubbed by some as Roger Federer on skis, had the same kind of fame in the alpine world as Mikaela Shiffrin and Lindsey Vonn given his 53 World Cup wins and gold medal in the giant slalom at the Beijing Winter Games in 2022. He entered the Games as the best skier of his generation. 

But when these Olympics conclude and historians examine the Games, it will be another Swiss skier who will be compared with the all-time Olympic alpine greats. 

Franjo von Allmen, just 24, took gold in the men’s super-G on Wednesday, his third gold medal in less than a week of competition. He becomes the first male alpine skier to win three gold medals in a single Winter Games in 58 years and now ranks with the all-timers (Austrian Toni Sailer, in 1956, and France’s Jean-Claude Killy, in 1968) as the only male skiers to win three Olympic golds in a single Winter Games. 

“I would love to win more, but for me to win a third medal, and moreover a third gold medal, all the planets would have to line up,” Von Allmen said before Wednesday’s race.

The planets lined up —and you are looking at a star. 

Who will star on Thursday?

One of America’s biggest winter stars and easily its most famous snowboarder will be on stage Thursday afternoon at 1:30 p.m. ET for the snowboard women’s halfpipe final in Livigno. Chloe Kim is a two-time defending gold medallist (Pyeongchang and Beijing) but it was an uncomfortable lead-up for her as she injured her shoulder during a training run in Switzerland the second week of January. Kim is wearing a brace on her left shoulder but put down a leading score of 90.25 in qualification to set her up for a big final day.

Kim is already the only woman to win consecutive Olympic halfpipe gold medals and now attempts to become the first halfpipe snowboarder in Olympic history — male or female — to win three consecutive gold medals. Others to watch in the women’s halfpipe include Japan’s Shimizu Sara and Judo Rise, Maddie Mastro of the U.S. and Korea 17-year-old rising star Choi Gaon. 

Olympic imagery

The Athletic has a cool data piece on the men’s hockey tournament featuring projections from a statistical model that uses player ratings to estimate relative team strength, calculates each team’s odds of winning every game and simulates the full tournament 30,000 times. 

Numbers to know

1:06.28 – Winning 1,000-metre time for U.S. speedskater Jordan Stolz, a new Olympic record in the event.

9 – Career Olympic goals for Slovakia’s Juraj Slafkovsky. The Montreal Canadiens forward scored seven goals as a 17-year-old four years ago in Beijing.

What we’re reading around the web

► The climb of Anna Gibson — the inevitable, accidental U.S. Olympian in ski mountaineering. By Brendon Quinn of The Athletic 

► Internal conflicts and resignations plague France’s 2030 Winter Olympics preparations. By Samuel Petrequin of The Associated Press.

► French biathlete guilty of fraud wins Olympic gold while scammed teammate comes 80th. By Andy Bull of The Guardian

► Lindsey Vonn’s crash heightens fear for relatives of Olympic skiers. By Julia Frankel of The Associated Press.

► Mikaela Shiffrin’s tense slalom run leads to a ‘miracle’ for her U.S. teammates. By Tim Layden for NBC Olympics.

► ‘We Still Have a Sports Section for a Few Days, and Readers Need Me to Tell a Story.’ By Ivan L. Nagy of CJR. 

► Ice hockey-Goalies show pride and personality with artistic helmets. By Amy Tennery and Giulio Piovaccari of Reuters