KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The Ukrainian skeleton racer who was disqualified from the Milan Cortina Olympics was given a gift of more than $200,000 on Tuesday to help him keep competing and advocating for his country.

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Vladislav Heraskevych was barred from Olympic competition last week because he insisted on wearing a “helmet of memory” adorned with images of more than 20 Ukrainian athletes and coaches killed during the country’s war with Russia.

Ukrainian businessman Rinat Akhmetov — the owner of the Shakhtar Donetsk soccer club and the Azovstal steel works in Mariupol — gave the money to Heraskevych from his charity foundation. The amount is equal to what the country’s Olympic gold medalists would get.

“Vlad Heraskevych was denied the opportunity to compete for victory at the Olympic Games, yet he returns to Ukraine a true winner,” Akhmetov said in a statement. “The respect and pride he has earned among Ukrainians through his actions are the highest reward.

Ukraine’s Vladyslav Heraskevych arrives at the finish during a men’s skeleton training session at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

“At the same time, I want him to have enough energy and resources to continue his sporting career, as well as to fight for truth, freedom and the remembrance of those who gave their lives for Ukraine.”

The money is set to be paid to the 27-year-old Heraskevych’s charity foundation “to ensure the athlete and his coaching staff have the necessary resources to continue their sporting career and their advocacy for Ukraine on the international stage,” a statement on behalf of Akhmetov’s foundation said.

Ukrainian skeleton athlete Vladyslav Heraskevych speaks to the media amid an ongoing appeal hearing in Milan, Italy, Friday, Feb. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Stefanie Dazio)

Shakhtar Donetsk regularly plays in the Champions League despite being exiled from its home city and the $400 million Donbas Arena since 2014, when the Russian-backed conflict began in eastern Ukraine.

AP Winter Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics

By TIM REYNOLDS, AP Sports Writer

CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy (AP) — It was a couple of weeks before Christmas. Elana Meyers Taylor was in Norway, prepping for a World Cup bobsled weekend. Things were going horribly. Her body was hurting, she wondered if she was doing right by her two deaf children, and the racing results were, well, bad.

So, she texted her husband. The message: I’m done.

“This is just impossible,” the U.S. bobsledding great wrote. “It’s never going to work.”

Funny how an Olympic gold medal changes things. Barely two months after nearly quitting — her husband, former bobsledder Nic Taylor, flew to Norway after those texts to talk her out of it — Meyers Taylor won the women’s monobob gold medal at the Milan Cortina Games. And she was back on the ice Tuesday, prepping with Jadin O’Brien for the two-woman race that starts Friday.

“The only thing that has really changed is I’m sleep-deprived now,” Meyers Taylor said. “I’m an Olympic gold medalist with a lack of sleep.”

That’s a good problem to have.

At 41, she became the oldest woman to win an individual gold medal in Winter Games history. (Anette Norberg, then 43, was on the Swedish team that won curling gold at the 2010 Vancouver Games.) Meyers Taylor’s sixth career Olympic medal tied Bonnie Blair for the most by a U.S. woman in the Winter Games, and it also extended her record for most medals by a Black woman in the winter showcase.

“Oh, I don’t think I’m going to process this for a while,” Meyers Taylor said. “There were so many moments during this entire season, during this past four years, that we just thought it was impossible, or I thought it wasn’t possible. My team around me believed in me the entire time.”

Turns out, so did her husband’s team. Nic Taylor is now a performance coach and works with the NBA’s San Antonio Spurs. When a Spurs player — the couple won’t say who — learned Meyers Taylor was struggling, Nic Taylor was gifted a plane ticket and told go to Norway immediately.

Without that gift, who knows what would have happened.

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“As soon as I saw that E had won, I just started screaming, jumping, hugging anyone who was close. Almost passed out because I was excited,” said O’Brien, a bobsled rookie who was recruited to the team last fall by Meyers Taylor — and now is an Olympian. “Without a doubt, the coolest sports moment I’ve ever been part of.”

To put that praise in perspective — “the coolest sports moment” she’s ever been part of — consider that O’Brien won three NCAA indoor track championships in pentathlon at Notre Dame and was a 10-time All-American there.

“Yeah, that’s saying something,” O’Brien said. “It was beyond incredible.”

Meyers Taylor, just in case, spent part of Monday before the final two monobob runs teaching her two sons sign language for various terms — like gold medal, and Olympic champion. She insists that she didn’t think they would actually need to use them.

They’re going to get used a lot going forward. The boys — Nico, 5, and Noah, 3 — evidently knew what was happening. The coolest thing that happened in Day 1 as a gold medalist, Meyers Taylor said, was Noah putting on the gold medal.

“He knew. He started signing, ‘Noah, champion,’” Meyers Taylor said. “I didn’t get it on video because he wasn’t wearing pants, of course, because what toddler wants to wear pants?”

It’s somewhat understandable that Meyers Taylor didn’t think her kids would need to know terms like “gold medal.” Her results this season didn’t exactly make it seem likely.

She was 10th in the World Cup monobob standings; eight women won medals on the circuit this winter and she wasn’t one of them. Her average finish was 10th and her result at Cortina during a race on the Olympic track in November was 19th — a whopping 2.43 seconds behind the winning time.

And her Olympic history was simultaneously filled with heartbreak and accomplishment. At the 2014 Sochi Games, she led Kaillie Humphries Armbruster — then from Canada, now her U.S. teammate and the bronze medalist on Monday night — going into the final run of the two-woman race. She lost the final run by 0.21 seconds, enough to lose the gold medal by 0.10 seconds. Then at the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics, she lost the two-woman race by 0.07 seconds.

Monday’s race was even closer — the margin between Meyers Taylor and silver medalist Laura Nolte of Germany was just 0.04 seconds.

But this time, she got it done.

“That’s a moment I’ve been working for every four years and that’s why I came back is for that moment, to be on that start line and feel that again,” Meyers Taylor said. “That is a crazy addictive feeling and I don’t know where I’m going to get it from after I leave this sport.”

There’s the retirement talk again.

She and her husband want a third child. Meyers Taylor has said countless times that she feels lucky to have her kids on tour, but it’s a daunting task, even with a nanny there to assist. Traveling with three might be too much.

Besides, there’s nothing else to prove. She’s won everything the sport offers.

“I was determined to keep fighting, determined to just put down the best runs I could,” Meyers Taylor said. “And look what happened.”

AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics

By COLLEEN BARRY

MILAN (AP) — Anastasia Kucherova, a Russian living in Milan, voiced her opposition to Russia’s war against Ukraine with a highly symbolic, if anonymous, act: Carrying the Ukraine team placard during the opening ceremony of the Milan Cortina Winter Games.

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Kucherova was swathed in a long, hooded silver puffer coat, her eyes covered with dark glasses — like all the other placard bearers for the 92 nations competing in the Olympics. The Ukraine sign was illuminated for the crowd to read.

At first the country assignments were going to be random, but later the choreographer asked if the volunteers had preferences, and Kucherova chose Ukraine.

Kucherova, an architect who has been living in Milan for 14 years, was unrecognizable, and her nationality was not announced to the public when she led the five Ukrainian athletes competing in Milan into San Siro stadium to resounding cheers.

She first revealed her role to her 879 Instagram followers and then in an interview with The Associated Press.

“When you walk by the side of these people you realize they have every human right to feel hatred towards any Russian,’’ she told the AP on Monday. “Still, I think it’s important to do even a small action to show them that maybe not all the people are thinking the same way.”

For Kucherova, speaking about her small act of resistance on the second anniversary of the poisoning death of dissident Alexei Navalny is a way of reminding the world that the war continues, even as life elsewhere goes on.

“Ukrainians don’t have any possibility to avoid these thoughts or to ignore the existence of war. So it is their reality. They keep loving each other, getting married or doing sports, coming to the Olympics. But all of this is happening (against) a devastating background.”

Without being told that Kucherova was Russian, the athletes immediately recognized her origins and addressed her in Russian. That was a sign for Kucherova of “some profound connection” between Russians and Ukrainians “that obviously could live on if not for the war.”

The Milan delegation was led by flag bearer Yelyzaveta Sydorko, a short track speedskater, and included figure skater Kyrylo Marsak. Both athletes have fathers who are fighting on the front lines in a war that is nearing its fourth anniversary.

“There is literally no word you can say that can undo the harm that these people have already suffered, and there is no word that can come in close to forgiveness,’’ said Kucherova.

Right before walking into the stadium, “I turned around — I didn’t know what to say to them — but I just said that the entire stadium is going to give them the standing ovation.’’ The Ukrainians appeared skeptical, she said.

When the cheers came, Kucherova said it felt like the entire stadium was “recognizing their independence, recognizing their will for freedom, their courage in making it all the way to the Olympics.”

She cried, silently, behind her glasses.

Kucherova hasn’t visited Russia since 2018, but understands that she is taking a risk by defying the regime.

“I have to be worried about this, and I’m supposed to be scared about this. And I cannot guarantee that me speaking out will not harm any people I know,’’ she said. “But what I think is that if I, living in a democratic country and enjoying all the freedoms, if I am scared, this means that the regime has won.”

Kucherova held the sign for another delegation, Denmark, which also received a rousing ovation for that nation’s resistance of U.S. threats to take over Greenland, a self-governing Danish territory.

“Yes, this is a coincidence, but I pondered over it,” Kucherova said.

AP Winter Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics

A Burnsville woman has admitted to fatally shooting a 70-year-old man at her father’s Burnsville home, a killing that prosecutors say she then tried to cover up by hiring someone to clean up the blood and hide the body in Minneapolis.

Josephine Ann Powers, 26, pleaded guilty in Dakota County District Court last week to second-degree intentional murder for shooting Michael Robert Riccio around July 9, 2024, at a home she shared with her father.

Josephine Ann Powers (Courtesy of the Dakota County Sheriff’s Office)

Ten days later, Riccio’s body was discovered by police in a large container outside a shed at a north Minneapolis home. The Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s Office determined Riccio, of Minneapolis, died of a single gunshot wound to the head in a homicide.

The criminal complaint did not offer a clear motive for the killing, although it said a man, later identified as Christopher Michael Hawkins, told police she told him “a guy was (expletive) with her and she could not take it anymore, so she shot him.” The complaint didn’t offer any details about her precise relationship with Riccio, whose obituary said he was known in his neighborhood as “Mechanic Mike.”

Powers reached a plea agreement with the prosecution and entered an Alford plea to the murder charge, meaning she maintains innocence while acknowledging the state likely has enough evidence to convict her.

The state has agreed to withdraw its motion for an aggravated sentence, and the parties agreed to a 22¾-year prison term, which is the low-end of state sentencing guidelines. Powers remains jailed ahead of sentencing, which is scheduled for May 11.

In June, Hawkins, 49, of Minneapolis, pleaded guilty to felony aiding an offender by being an accomplice after the fact for helping Powers. A charge of felony interfering with a body or death scene with intent to conceal a body will be dismissed at sentencing as part of plea agreement. A sentencing date has not been scheduled, and he is out of custody on bond and due back in court for a March 18 hearing.

A strong odor of bleach

According to the criminal complaints, Powers reported the killing to police on July 18, saying that a man had shot and killed Riccio about nine days earlier. When police were in the house, officers smelled a strong odor of bleach and saw what looked like patched bullet holes in the hallway.

Powers’ father said he returned to his Burnsville home on Keating Court, near Minnesota 13, after a two-week vacation and found what he thought were brown paint splatters throughout the house. Then, while home on a lunch break, he saw a male in a hazmat suit cleaning up the “paint” and removing portions of carpet from the basement floor. He later smelled a strong odor of bleach, and was told by Powers’ friend on July 18 that she told him Riccio had been shot and killed in the house while he was on vacation.

Christopher Michael Hawkins (Courtesy of the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office)

Powers said another man, whom she referred to as “Chris,” helped in moving the body. She said he kept his belongings in Minneapolis in a shed with tarps outside it, and she described where Riccio’s body was hidden.

Police carried out a search warrant in Minneapolis and found Riccio’s remains. Hawkins was at the home and told police that Powers and a man asked him to move a package from a Burnsville address in exchange for a truck, according to the complaint against him.

Hawkins said he saw blood throughout the Burnsville home’s downstairs area, and saw what he believed was a body wrapped up in garbage bags and rugs. He wrapped an additional tarp around the body and loaded it into a pickup, and helped Powers clean up the blood, the complaint said.

Another man told police that Powers picked him up the morning of July 9 and they went to her house. He said he was outside Powers’ bedroom, and could see and hear Powers and Riccio arguing. Powers started throwing things at Riccio, then grabbed a handgun and shot him, the witness reported, according to the complaint.

“Powers freaked out and ran around the house” and she began to clean up the blood, the complaint said of what the man reported. He said he didn’t help with the cleaning or moving Riccio’s body.

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