Weston sets pace as racers unite behind banned Ukrainian

Briton twice breaks track record in push for gold then reveals shock at IOC ban for ‘big personality’ Heraskevych

- Andy Bull

Team GB's Matt Weston set successive track records to sit in first with the final two runs to come tonight

(TOM JENKINS/ THE GUARDIAN)

This was the race that will always be remembered for the one man who did not make the start.

Exactly 21 minutes before the men’s skeleton was scheduled to begin, the International Olympic Committee put out a 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 that the two British competitors, Matt Weston and Marcus Wyatt, said they did not 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, 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 give an impromptu press conference himself.