Red Gerard won Olympic gold in slopstyle Sunday night.
PYEONGCHANG, South Korea (AP) — The grand plan when Red Gerard
and his brothers set down rails and attached a tow rope to a dirt
bike to fashion a snowboard park in their backyard
wasn’t all that grand.
« Just having fun snowboarding, » Gerard explained.
Look where all that fun landed him.
The 17-year-old
snowboarder from just outside of
Breckenridge, Colorado, won the Olympic gold medal in slopestyle
Sunday, courtesy of a nimble, creative ride through a wind-swept
course that left almost everyone else scrambling to keep their
footing.
Gerard captured America’s first gold medal of the
Pyeongchang Games — first medal of any color, in fact — and will
soon go on a victory tour he never saw coming, even if the rowdy,
red-white-and-blue mosh pit full of friends and family at the
bottom envisioned it all along.
« I said it from Day 1, » said Brendan Gerard, one of Red’s five
older siblings. « The kid was 2 years old when we started him
snowboarding. I can recall him falling down the hill at 2 and him
dragging ass behind me. Gave it two weeks, and he started moving
faster. By 6, it was inevitable he was going to be something
huge. »
Thanks to a blustery wind that swirled upward from the bottom of
the mountain, « huge » wasn’t the word of the day on a course
already designed to reward technical tricks on the rails and
interesting choices below as opposed to sheer massiveness on the
jumps.
That couldn’t have suited Gerard much better.
Listed at 5-foot-5 and 116 pounds (1.65 meters and 53 kilograms),
he does not overpower courses and slam down landings the way
that, say, silver and bronze medalists Max Parrot and Mark
McMorris of Canada often do. Instead, Gerard relies on the quick
reflexes he learned in the tight quarters of his backyard, which
is visible from Interstate 70 down below, and where neighborhood
kids feel free to pop in unannounced to put down a few runs.
The top of the Olympic course is also tight. Unlike most of the
other 10 finalists, Gerard didn’t pick the straightest, easiest
path through the rails. Instead, he mixed and matched with a
variety of lobs and turns over rails and jibs with some cool
grabs to match. He was the only contender to fly over a goal post
feature in the top section.
« Everyone in the contest was worried about the wind and stuff, »
said Gerard’s friend and Olympic roommate, Kyle Mack, who loaned
Gerard his jacket as the winner-to-be rushed out the door shortly
after a 6 a.m. wake-up call. « I kept telling him, ‘Don’t think
about it. Do the run you know you have to do.’ He went out and
put it down flawlessly. »
On the second-to-last jump, Gerard took a risk by trying a
1080-degree jump off the quarterpipe side of the kicker instead
of going straight through the jump and flying higher. The risk is
that the landing won’t create enough speed to take into the last
ramp, but that worked out fine, too. Gerard closed with a
backside triple-cork 1440, and his only thought while in the air
was: « Just don’t blow it. »
He didn’t, and the scene at the bottom was wacky in a way that
only the Olympics can dream up. After his first-place score of
87.16 flashed, and with a handful of riders still up top, there
was 17-year-old shredder Red Gerard kibitzing with none other
than IOC President Thomas Bach.
What in the world did those guys talk about?
« He was like, ‘What were you thinking during all those spins?’
And I was like, ‘I just want to land a run, that’s about it,' »
Gerard said.
A simple enough plan, and one very fitting for a kid who came to
his first Olympics wide-eyed and unaware of the way it could
change his life.
From here, he will travel back to the West Coast for the
post-victory TV appearances and sponsor shoots. Then, he’s coming
back to South Korea for the Olympic debut of Big Air, where he
could become only the second snowboarder to win two medals at the
same Olympics.
Not a bad prospect for a guy who first stepped into a snowboard
for fun, not glory.
« Cool to see, » said Canadian Sebastien Toutant. « Everyone’s
trying to win and do good. But he actually enjoys snowboarding
and you can see it. He’ll snowboard until he can’t snowboard. »
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AP Sports Writer Pat Graham contributed to this story.
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More AP Olympic coverage: https://wintergames.ap.org/
