The troubled Caribbean country, Haiti, has fielded two athletes for the Milan Cortina Winter Games, and they will proudly wear Haitian symbols — although one less than intended after intervention by the International Olympic Committee.
The skiers will compete in uniforms designed by Italian-Haitian designer Stella Jean that originally featured an image of Toussaint Louverture, the former slave who led a revolution that created the world’s first Black republic in 1804. The IOC ruled that the image violated Olympic rules barring political symbolism, requiring Jean to come up with a creative solution: painting over the nation's founding father.
