He expressed confidence that he would have brought Ukraine an award in skeleton if he had been given the opportunity to compete instead of disqualification.
“Like all these days, these are mixed feelings, because we did not win the medal for which we worked for many years. And, given the results of the competition, I sincerely believe that we would have received it. Therefore, this criticism is not entirely justified: they say that Ukraine does not have medals, but we would get it. But it’s difficult to get medals when you are groundlessly disqualified from the competition,” the athlete said.
At the same time, he is glad that these Olympic Games have become the reason for unification around Ukraine, and this, in his opinion, is more important than any medals.
“Despite all the bans and disqualifications, we managed to honor the athletes. The entire world press is now writing about them – this is very important. We also had the opportunity to see comments from the relatives and friends of the athletes depicted on the helmet, and for this alone it was worth going through everything that happened,” Geraskevich added.
Context
On February 9, Geraskevich announced that he plans to compete at the Olympics in Milan in helmet with photos of Ukrainian athletes killed by the Russians. The IOC did not allow him to wear this helmet during official training and Olympic competitions.
The Ukrainian noted that the day before, the Italian athlete competed in a helmet on which the Russian flag was depicted, and “there was no reaction.”
Instead of a “helmet of remembrance,” the IOC allowed Geraskevich to wear a black mourning armband during the competition, calling it a compromise. Geraskevich called the decision unfair, saying that honoring the memory of the victims is not political propaganda. Despite the ban, he went to training wearing a “memory helmet”.
On February 12, the first Olympic races with the participation of Geraskevich were supposed to take place. However, on the same day, the Ukrainian was disqualified because his helmet allegedly did not comply with the rules.
