Milano Cortina 2026 and the Collapse of the Neutrality Myth

By Gabriele Toso

A helmet was all it took.

Not a flag, not a political speech.

A helmet worn by Ukrainian skeleton racer Vladyslav Heraskevych, featuring a tribute to Ukrainian athletes killed by the Russian army since 2022, was deemed “too political” to remain on the track.

The result? Disqualification under Rule 50 of the Olympic Charter, which prohibits political demonstrations during competition.

At the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics, that silent gesture captured a tension vibrating through the entire Olympic movement: the idea of neutrality is no longer an undisputed principle, but a battlefield.

Sport is always political; pretending otherwise is the true propaganda.

After the invasion of Ukraine, the International Olympic Committee introduced the formula of “Individual Neutral Athletes”. In Milano Cortina 2026, Russians and Belarusians were permitted to participate without a flag, without the anthem, without national colours, and subject to a strict selection process excluding anyone with military ties or who had publicly supported the war. No official Russian delegation was present. It was a compromise designed to balance Olympic universalism with state accountability, yet it reignited the debate over so-called neutrality. Several Eastern European countries openly criticized the choice, arguing that even neutral status was an excessive concession in the context of ongoing military aggression. Ukrainian athletes, for their part, used post-race interviews to denounce the presence of Russians, even those formally labelled “neutral”.

The Heraskevych case amplified everything: his gesture was judged a violation of Rule 50, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called it “brave”, opening a symbolic conflict between freedom of expression and Olympic discipline. Rule 50, intended to protect the sporting arena from political exploitation, has transformed into a tool that decides which expressions are permissible and which are not. It doesn’t eliminate politics: it administers it. And in doing so, it makes it visible.

Tensions did not fade after the Closing Ceremony. Looking ahead to the March 2026 Paralympics, the International Paralympic Committee granted several wildcards to Russian and Belarusian athletes, reopening the issue of national symbols. Ukraine announced it would compete but skip official ceremonies; Estonia, Finland, Latvia, and Poland declared a boycott of the Opening Ceremony. The Ukrainian Sports Minister called the decision “outrageous”, while European officials highlighted the incompatibility of reinstating flags and anthems while a war is still raging.

Two global sporting institutions, two different solutions, the same geopolitical context: neutrality proved to be not an objective fact, but a negotiated political choice.

In this scenario, the Russian question was not the only source of friction. Many observers pointed out that Israel was neither excluded nor subjected to similar restrictions despite the context of the war in Gaza. The comparison between the treatment reserved for Moscow and that applied to other states fueled accusations of double standards.

This is not necessarily about taking sides on whether situations are identical, but about questioning the criteria through which neutrality is applied. If the argument is that sport must distance itself from wars of aggression and violations of international law, why does this distance translate into drastic measures in some cases and not in others?

The answer, however uncomfortable, is that neutrality does not operate in a vacuum: it is shaped by power dynamics and diplomatic balances. Milano Cortina 2026 consolidated an institutional precedent that emerged after Paris 2024, but it did it in an even more polarized environment.

The “myth of political neutrality” is no longer a theoretical provocation: it is a lens through which to read the concrete decisions of global sports organizations. For students of international relations, these Games offer an extraordinary laboratory. The Olympics are not an exception to global politics; they are one of its most visible theaters.

The rhetoric of Olympic universalism and unity through sport coexists with realpolitik, with sanctions, boycotts, diplomatic pressure, and armed conflict. Neutrality, far from being a natural state, becomes a practice of governance: it establishes who can compete, under which symbols, and with what expressive limits. Milano Cortina did not invent this tension, but it made it impossible to ignore.

If Heraskevych’s helmet was deemed too political, it is perhaps because it reminded everyone that sport does not take place in a parallel universe. The slopes, arenas, and ice rinks are crossed by the same fractures that divide the international system. To continue speaking of neutrality as if it were a pure, uncontaminated state is to ignore reality.

For those interested in the complexity of international relations, this reality is the true legacy of Milano Cortina 2026: sport has never been neutral; it is simply one of the ways in which politics manifests, regulates itself, and, sometimes, masks itself.