Russian athletes were conspicuous in their neutral colours during this year’s Winter Olympics and Paralympics due to a ban based on doping allegations. In Vancouver in 2010 and in Sochi in 2014, however, Russia’s Olympic hockey jerseys prominently featured a two-headed eagle exactly where Canada’s jerseys highlighted the maple leaf. This two-headed eagle is not a modern invention. It is “Byzantine.” The eagle was, if we travel 1,800 years back in time, the imperial symbol of the Byzantine Empire.