The first time, it was sheer disbelief. Red Gerard wasn’t merely stunned he’d won an Olympic medal. He was stunned he’d even qualified for an Olympic final.
In Pyeongchang, back in 2018, Gerard was a fresh-faced American teenager who didn’t know any better. He stayed up the night before the snowboard slopestyle final, binging “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” on Netflix with a friend, then overslept the next morning. In the rush to make it on time, he had to borrow said friend’s jacket. It happened to be two sizes too big. It hung down to his thighs.
No matter. He vaulted from 11th to first on his final run. He won gold by over a point.
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“It wasn’t really supposed to happen,” Gerard said, eight years later. “It was just a complete surprise.”
At 17, he was the youngest American snowboarder to win Olympic gold, the youngest Winter Olympian to win gold since 1928.
The second time brought with it a different kind of disbelief. The kind that comes when expectations aren’t met and disappointment sinks in. Gerard was the defending Olympic champion in 2022, at the top of his game, aiming for a second straight gold.
He finished fourth.
The frustration flowed from there: Gerard and other snowboarders in Beijing voiced their displeasure with what they deemed inconsistent judging. Gerard called it “heartbreaking.” He wasn’t at his best, but it still left a bitter taste in his mouth.
“A little politics behind it,” he said. “But that’s kind of what we deal with. … I was bummed for a couple of days as well. That’s the most frustrating thing about our sport, that it’s judged, and every competition, whether it’s 30 or 60 riders, no one’s going to agree on the way it was judged.”
Red Gerard celebrates after winning gold in Pyeongchang in 2018. (Martin Bureau / AFP via Getty Images)
He arrived in Italy this month hoping to redeem himself and possibly make history in the process. It started with a 20th-place finish in big air qualifications, an event in which Gerard, truth be told, had no interest in competing. But because all snowboarders are required to compete in both big air and slopestyle, he was out there early in the Games, and wasn’t happy about it.
“Honestly, I don’t understand why we’re forced to do this,” he said. “I don’t like to do this. It’s not what I enjoy.”
What the 25-year-old, born in Cleveland and raised in Silverthorne, Colo., enjoys is the slopestyle. It’s his bread and butter, the event that catapulted him to fame — if only for a brief moment — back in 2018. And if he wins again, he’ll become the first snowboarder to win two Olympic slopestyle gold medals.
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Gerard is as easygoing as they come, a laid-back boarder who grew up watching the X Games and Dew Tours, chasing his five brothers around the backyard while they practiced jumps and hopped off rails. For a while, in fact, the Gerards looked at competitions as “pretty lame,” Red admitted, “like something you shouldn’t do.”
It was only after he started piling up victories and made the U.S. Ski and Snowboarding team that his older brothers acknowledged he was onto something.
Then came 2018. And everything changed.
“It’s funny, you win a gold medal and you go from being this unknown snowboarder to an A-list celebrity for a minute or two,” he said. “Then, like a month later, you’re back to being an F-list celebrity.”
He remembers walking through New York City to satisfy a slew of media requirements and being mobbed.
“I don’t know how the Justin Biebers of the world do it,” Gerard said. “I literally don’t know how celebrities move around the Earth.”
Fame is not the goal. A second gold medal is.
Red Gerard finished 11th in qualifying for Wednesday’s slopestyle final. (Millo Moravski / Agence Zoom / Getty Images)
Gerard is now one of the faces of the U.S. Snowboarding team and is sponsored by the likes of Toyota, Mountain Dew, Oakley and Quicksilver. He punched his ticket to Wednesday’s final with an 11th-place finish in qualifying Sunday. He’ll enter once again in top form, having won back-to-back X Games titles heading into the Olympics.
He’ll be joined by Ollie Martin, his 17-year-old teammate who is still in high school and took fourth in big air despite breaking his arm two weeks ago, and Jake Canter. Both are making their Olympic debuts.
“It’s just such a heavy game, so you’re sitting there nervous,” Gerard said.
The final is set to start at 12:30 p.m. local time (6:30 a.m. ET) in Livigno. No alarm clock needed. Gerard plans to get to the course early, study the top section, analyze the rails closely and envision what the winning run will look like. Then he’ll take his shot at another gold.