Orphan rides ‘magic powder’ from Haiti to Winter Olympics

By JOHN LEICESTER
Associated Press

BEIJING (AP) — A love for snow that started when he was a young orphan who had just arrived in France saw Richardson Viano become Haiti’s first Winter Olympian. Silvia Viano adopted the Alpine skier when he was 3. She was on hand Sunday in Beijing to see her son race in the men’s giant slalom and make Olympic history for the Caribbean island of his birth. She recalled how his first encounter with snow lifted his mood as she and her husband were driving him from the airport in 2005 to their home in the French Alps. They stopped on a high Alpine pass resplendent where a snowflake landed on his nose and he started laughing. He would later coin his own phrase for snow: “the magic powder.”