Haiti’s Winter Olympians Raced in Uniforms Missing Their Hero

Haiti’s two skiers left the Milan Cortina Winter Games with no medals and a 29th-place slalom, wearing kits whose most famous figure had been painted off. Richardson Viano, 23, and Stevenson Savart, 25, raced from 6 to 22 February 2026 in clothes that still carried a red horse, tropical leaves, and the word Haiti, after the International Olympic Committee ordered Toussaint Louverture removed.

Italian-Haitian designer Stella Jean called that gap the thing that traveled. The two men then posted the country’s best winter results, which still sat minutes and tens of places behind the leaders.

The Horse Arrived Without Its Rider

Jean had spent more than a year on the project, unpaid, drawing on a 2006 mixed-media portrait of Louverture by Haitian painter Édouard Duval-Carrié. In the canvas the general rides a red horse through dense foliage and holds a snake in place of a sword, a nod to Danbala. She wanted that rider on the snow.

On 4 January she was told the sketch did not comply with Olympic rules. For 24 hours she said the team would have no uniform at all. Italian artisans then spent five days painting the figure out by hand, and on 5 February, the night before the opening ceremony, Jean brought the finished pieces into Milan herself. The athletes saw them for the first time that day. They had one set each and no spare.

We should really be thanking them, because all of this buzz is partly because the General is not present. His absence speaks louder than his presence would have.

Stella Jean, designer of Haiti’s Milan Cortina uniforms

The IOC later said it hand-painted uniforms with a riderless horse had been approved after Haiti’s Olympic committee supplied them in Milan, under rules every national committee had been given before the Games. Jean kept the general’s horse. “Haiti” sat across its back under a blue sky. She also worried, out loud, that rain would make the paint run on the synthetic cloth.

Fashion accounts circulated the jackets as objects before most people could name the skiers. The empty saddle was the detail that locked the frame. A historical portrait would have been busier. The missing rider read in one glance.

What Richardson Viano Did in the Slalom

Viano finished 29th in the men’s slalom on 16 February at Bormio in 2:07.80, 14.19 seconds behind Switzerland’s Loïc Meillard, who won in 1:53.61. He split 1:04.31 and 1:03.49, ranking 29th then 30th on the two runs, and it was his best Olympic result after 34th in the same event at Beijing 2022.

Two days earlier, on the Stelvio giant slalom, he had placed 44th in 2:42.83, 17.83 seconds off the lead, after a first run of 1:24.55 and a second of 1:18.28. In 2022 he had not finished the giant slalom. Completing both runs in Italy was the quieter shift in his file.

Haiti’s prime minister, Alix Didier Fils-Aimé, publicly praised the giant slalom result. The Haitian Olympic Committee called it proof of work under the blue-and-red flag. The official slalom table still put a Haitian name in the 20s while a long list of better-funded starters did not finish.

HAITI AT MILAN CORTINA, BY THE CLOCK

Savart opened the meet as flag bearer on 6 February. Viano carried the flag at the close. Haiti left with zero medals, which was never in doubt, and with a slalom rank no Haitian had held before.

Savart Finished Three Races on Thin Gear

Savart, Haiti’s first Olympic cross-country skier, started three events at Tesero and finished all of them. He was 64th in the 20 km skiathlon on 8 February in 56:52.8, 10:41.8 behind winner Johannes Høsflot Klæbo. He placed 82nd in the sprint on 10 February in 3:40.92. On 13 February he finished 79th out of 113 skiers in the 10 km free in 24:59.4, 4:23.2 off Klæbo’s winning time.

Before the Games he said he was traveling with 20 pairs of skis, ten for skating and ten for classic, and that the trucks of the large nations hold about 80 pairs per athlete. At the 2023 world championships in Planica, he said, Haiti turned up with three pairs and borrowed French skis to race. He also said the first day there was the first time many people had seen a Black skier who was not far off the pace, and that the mixed zone then kept him for two hours because the team did not yet know how to leave.

WHAT HE TOOK TO TESERO

• Ski stock: Twenty pairs in Italy, split ten skate and ten classic, against about 80 pairs for a big-nation racer.
• Planica 2023: Three pairs on arrival, then borrowed French skis for the world championships.
• Stated aim: Finish every Olympic race, with a long-shot hope of a sprint top 50.

He did finish every race. The sprint target stayed out of reach. Crowds still met the skiathlon finish as a moment worth standing for, which is a different kind of clock from the one on the board.

A Ski Federation Born After the Earthquake

Neither man learned to ski in Haiti. Viano was born on 16 August 2002 in Tabarre and adopted at age 3 by an Italian family living in France; his adoptive father was a ski instructor. Savart was born on 11 May 2000 in Delmas and adopted at age 3 by Thierry and Sandrine Savart, who put him on snow in the Vosges. He started at five, after a club first said he was too small.

The Haitian Ski Federation exists because of the 2010 earthquake. Jean-Pierre Roy, who later became its president, built it that year with French coach Thierry Montillet as a way to talk about the country in something other than rubble. Roy himself raced at the 2011 world championships, 78th in slalom and 127th in giant slalom. He later called Viano, who thought the pitch was a prank until he looked the federation up.

FROM PORT-AU-PRINCE TO BORMIO

1. 2010: Roy and Montillet form the Haitian Ski Federation after the earthquake.
2. 2011: Roy races the world championships for Haiti, 78th in slalom and 127th in giant slalom.
3. Summer 2019: Viano receives a Haitian passport and switches from France.
4. February 2022: Viano becomes Haiti’s first Winter Olympian in Beijing, 34th in slalom, out of the giant slalom.
5. 6 to 22 February 2026: Viano returns with Savart for Haiti’s second Winter Games.

The federation listed seven athletes heading into Milan Cortina, and two of them made the field. Both men receive help through the IOC’s Olympic Solidarity programme, which issued grants to 249 athletes already qualified for these Winter Games. Savart said the money let him live and buy the kit required to reach the start. “I’ve had it this year and it’s made a difference. Honestly, without it, it would have been even more complicated.”

He still works as a teaching assistant at a high school in Pontarlier and trains with the Olympic Mont d’Or club. The school lets him use the weight room, the young skiers’ equipment, and the minibus that also went to the Olympics. That is the winter programme Haiti can actually field: a French workplace, a Solidarity grant, and a flag.

Why the IOC Struck Louverture From the Jacket

Rule 50.2 of the Olympic Charter is the ban on political propaganda at Olympic sites. It says no kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda is permitted in Olympic sites, venues or other areas. National Olympic committees are also told to stay politically neutral. The IOC treats a founding father’s face on a parade jacket as propaganda under that rule. It does not treat a flag, a crest, or a horse the same way.

Jean did not pick a fight with the clause. “Rules are rules and must be respected, and that is what we have done,” she said at Haiti’s embassy in Rome on 31 January, when she previewed the kit. She also said the horse had to remain, because it was the general’s horse, and because it was the symbol of Haiti showing up. Gandy Thomas, Haiti’s ambassador to Italy, put the same thought in plainer language: presence was the point, and absence, he said, is the most dangerous form of erasing.

WHAT STAYED ON THE CLOTH

• The horse: A charging red mount with an empty saddle, still taken from Duval-Carrié’s painting.
• The ground: Lush tropical foliage under an azure sky, in the red and blue of the flag.
• The name: “Haiti” lettered across the horse’s back.
• The tignon: A headwrap on the women’s delegation look, a covering colonial law once forced on Black women, later turned into dress.
• The hoops: Gold Creole earrings, the jewelry enslaved women were allowed to keep.
• The pockets: Deep market pockets, Jean’s stand-in for the women who run Haiti’s street trade.

Jean said Haiti would have about nine seconds in the parade to show that the nation still exists. She also said the team was among the smallest and poorest in the arena and would still stand equal once the march began. The Paris 2024 uniforms she made for Haiti are already in the Olympic Museum’s collection. These winter pieces, she argued, became the first fully hand-painted Winter Olympic uniforms because of the barrier, not in spite of it.

The School Still Carries Louverture’s Name

Viano, speaking from pre-Games races in Bosnia, said that when people talk about Haiti they talk in catastrophic terms, and that racing was a way to find something nice. Savart, from his base in France, said he was proud to do it for Haiti and that seeing the country on the bib would give him more energy. He also said he still has family in Haiti, that he went back in 2015 with his adoptive family, and that the whole Haitian team was thinking of people living through a dark period.

Since the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, armed gangs have widened their hold on Port-au-Prince, with killings, sexual violence, and the recruitment of children. That is the country the kits were asked to represent in a few metres of cloth. It is also a country that cannot train alpine or cross-country skiers at home, which is why both Olympians were adopted out at age 3 and why Solidarity and European clubs do the work a tropical federation cannot.

Savart’s day job sits on the other side of the same name the IOC would not allow on a sleeve. He is a teaching assistant at Toussaint Louverture High School in Pontarlier, the campus that lends him the gym and the bus. The general who could not ride through the opening ceremony is the name on the building where Haiti’s skier trains between races.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who Represented Haiti at the 2026 Winter Olympics?

Only two athletes, both men: alpine skier Richardson Viano, born 16 August 2002 in Tabarre, and cross-country skier Stevenson Savart, born 11 May 2000 in Delmas. Savart carried the flag at the 6 February opening ceremony and Viano carried it at the close. Women in the delegation wore Jean’s tignon and hoop-earring look but did not race.

Why Did Haiti Change Its Winter Olympic Uniforms?

The original sketch put Toussaint Louverture on the kit, copied from Duval-Carrié’s 2006 painting, and on 4 January Jean was told that broke Olympic rules on political propaganda. Athletes may still speak in mixed zones, interviews, and on social media; they may not wear a political portrait into the parade. Artisans painted the rider out and left his horse.

What Is Olympic Solidarity and How Did It Help Haiti’s Skiers?

It is the IOC programme that redistributes Games revenue to national committees and athletes with the least money, including monthly grants for training, equipment, and travel, at home or at high-level centres. Both Haitian skiers used it; Savart said the grant this season paid for living costs and the gear required to reach the start, among 249 qualified winter athletes on similar scholarships.

What Painting Inspired Haiti’s Milan Cortina Kits?

Duval-Carrié’s Toussaint Louverture, 2006, oil on canvas in a mixed-media frame, 31 1/2 by 38 1/2 inches, held by the Figge Art Museum as gift of the estate of Dr. Walter E. Neiswanger and signed EDC 06. It shows the general barefoot on a red horse, holding a snake on a sword hilt, the snake standing in Vodou for Danbala.

When Did Haiti First Compete at the Winter Olympics?

At Beijing in 2022, with Viano as the only athlete and flag bearer. He placed 34th in the men’s slalom and did not finish the giant slalom. The federation behind him had been created in 2010, and its president, Jean-Pierre Roy, had already raced the 2011 world championships, 78th in slalom and 127th in giant slalom.