West Babylon's Henri Rivers IV did not finish Olympic slalom course

The first Winter Olympics for West Babylon’s Henri Rivers IV is in the books.

Rivers, 18, represented Jamaica in the men’s slalom in Bormio, Italy, on Monday morning. He was one of 49 racers in the 96-man field who did not finish the course, which presented brutal conditions with fog and heavy snow.

In a social media post, Team Jamaica said Rivers did not finish “mainly due to poor visibility.”

Switzerland’s Loic Meillard won the competition, finishing in a two-run combined time of 1 minute, 53.61 seconds. He became the first Swiss men’s skier to win Olympic gold in slalom since 1948. Austria’s Fabio Gstrein finished in 1:53.96 to claim silver and Norway’s Henrik Kristoffersen in 1:54.74 to win the bronze.

Brazil’s Lucas Pinheiro Braathen, who won the giant slalom competition on Sunday, was among the skiers who did not finish the course.

“It feels right for me just to be able to represent the black, green and gold,” Rivers told Newsday last month. “Just having such a well-known summer country in the Olympic Games, I just want to go out there and prove that we belong in winter sports as well and will be, hopefully, a force in years to come.”

Rivers – who was the flag bearer for Jamaica, his mother Karen’s native country – is a triplet alongside sisters Henniyah and Helaina, also technical skiers who went through the Olympic qualifying process. Henri was the lone sibling to compete in these Olympics, but the trio hopes to represent Jamaica in the 2030 Games in the French Alps and in 2034 in Utah.

“It would mean the world to me, just being there with my sisters,” Henri said last month. “Hopefully we're not apart. Hopefully we're in the same place, boys and girls in the same village and just competing with each other. It would be so much fun. Man, it’ll be a really good story for so many people. It'll be inspiring for so many young kids.”