US Domination: Olympian Binge Watched Netflix, Slept in, Still Won Gold
If you have been watching any of the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, then you are likely aware that the first gold medal brought home by the United States came by way of 17-year-old snowboarding phenom Red Gerard in the slopestyle event.
Buit it almost didn’t have a chance to happen.
According to Thrillist, Gerard had stayed up late the night before watching Netflix, which caused him to sleep in past his 6 a.m. alarm Friday morning.
Luckily for him, his roommate and fellow U.S. snowboarder Kyle Mack woke him up in time to grab a quick bite to eat for breakfast, which consisted of an egg sandwich with ham, cheese and avacado.
Mack even let his late-running roommate borrow his puffy coat when Gerard couldn’t find his own at the last moment, which allowed the young soon-to-be-Olympic medalist to reach the site of his event just in time for it to begin.
Yahoo Sports reported that Gerard messed up on his first two runs of the slopestyle finals and entered the third and final round of the event with a score that had him standing in last place in the field.
But that didn’t appear to matter too much to Gerard as he stood at the top of the hill and prepared himself for one last trip down.
Indeed, seemingly without a care or even much effort, he laid down a near-perfect run for his final run to the bottom, catching and clearing rails with ease in the top portion of the course prior to stringing together three incredible jumps complete with multiple twists and flips and stuck-landings to complete his event.
That final run vaulted him from worst to first in the scoring, which prompted a surprised “Holy s***” from Gerard.
It was then that he had to wait anxiously while three other riders made their final runs, one of whom produced a run awesome enough to come within one point of Gerard and claim silver, Canadian snowboarder Max Parrot.
“He’s a very creative rider,” said Parrot of the American who just barely beat him. “Always taking a line nobody does, like he did today.”
You can watch Gerard’s adrenaline-pumping gold medal slopestyle run right here in all of its glory:
Not bad for a kid who admitted that he never before quite realized how big the Olympic games really were, having grown up watching other major annual extreme sports events like the X-Games and Dew Tour.
Once all of the riders had finished their runs and it began to fully dawn on Gerard that he had just won the gold medal in his first Olympic games, in his excitement of the moment he uttered an F-bomb that managed to make it past the censors and tape delay at NBC Sports to be broadcast live, according to Thrillist.
This teenager, whose parents moved from Cleveland, Ohio, to the mountains of Colorado so he could more easily pursue his passion, not only brought home the first gold medal of the 2018 winter games for the U.S, but also became the first U.S. medalist to be born after the year 2000.
Hopefully, Gerard will continue to hone and refine his ample talent and skill to become an even better rider in the future, one who just may dominate the competitive snowboarding scene on behalf of the U.S. for years to come.
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