What’s next for Red Gerard? Everything

At only 17 years old, snowboarder Red Gerard reached the pinnacle of his sport — winning a gold medal at the 2018 Winter Olympics. So, what now?

Seventeen-year-old snowboarding sensation Redmond “Red” Gerard has reached the mountaintop — figuratively, sure, but in this moment, literally.

It’s a bright morning — Sunday, February 11, 2018 in Pyeongchang, South Korea — and Gerard is preparing to take the first of his three runs in the men’s slopestyle snowboarding final, an event for which he qualified the previous day with a third-place finish and a top score of 82.55.

At 17, not only is this Gerard’s first Olympics, but it’s also one of his first pro-level competitions. In snowboarding, athletes start out competing on the amateur circuit, which Gerard entered in 2011. In 2015, he was placing in competitions on the Revolution Tour, a launching pad into the pros. After placing fourth at the Junior World Championships in 2015, Gerard was on the pro circuit the next year.

Fast forward two years, and Gerard is taking his first run in the men’s slopestyle final.

It could have gone better. Gerard earned a score of 43.33 for his first run, good enough to put him in seventh place but far off from a podium spot.

Run 2 is only a marginal improvement — a score of 46.40. He’s attempting the big tricks the judges want to see, but he’s not putting down clean runs.

Entering the third and final run, Gerard is in last place. If you didn’t get to see what happened next in real time (approximately 9 p.m. ET in the United States), well, you missed out.

Gerard earned a score of 87.16 on his final run, thanks to a mind-blowing (and — crucially — clean) backside triple cork 1440:

For those unfamiliar with the jargon, on the trick, Gerard launched off the jump by spinning backwards (backside) and completed four full 360-degree rotations in the air (1440) while also flipping off-axis three times (triple cork).

The run made Gerard the youngest snowboarding gold medalist…ever. From any country.

What were you doing at 17?

When I spoke to Gerard this month while he was at the Comcast headquarters — one of his sponsors during the Winter Games and the reason his family was able to fly to South Korea to cheer him on — I had to know: How could you possibly top this? What motivates you to keep pushing?

"As a snowboarder, I’m here to have a good time."

“I started off snowboarding just having fun, and I still am having a great time, so I like to look at it that way,” Gerard says. “I try never to think too far ahead at all, so for me it’s just having fun.

“As a snowboarder, I’m here to have a good time. If it’s the Olympics, then, sure, but if it’s riding in the backcountry I’m gonna have just as much fun.”

On the topic having fun, I asked Gerard how calculated his runs are — as in, does he throw everything he’s got out there and hope he stomps a clean one, or does he hold certain tricks out for fear of being docked points on his score?

Many snowboarders will reserve their biggest and best tricks for their final run.

“There have been very few times where I leave my best trick for last,” says Gerard. “I’m there to just land a run, and I try to do my best run every day. When I land it, if I land it, after that it’s not really up to me, it’s up to the judges.

“I try to put everything out on the table usually and just see how it works out.”

The excitement surrounding the Olympics has died down, and many casual observers won’t watch pro snowboarding again for another four years. But these athletes continue competing throughout the year in events such as the FIS Snowboard World Championships and the X Games.

I asked Gerard what his training regimen looks like now and where he’s taking his career next.

Right now, Gerard is preparing for X Games Norway in Oslo in mid-May, where he’ll compete in big air, which he also did at the Winter Olympics. It’s common for snowboarders to compete in both slopestyle and — where it’s included — big air, but it’s rare for them to do either along with halfpipe.

Fans of Shaun White will remember he attempted to compete in both halfpipe — his usual discipline — as well as the inaugural slopestyle competition at the 2014 Sochi Games. He left Russia with no medals, after having dropped out of the slopestyle competition two days before the Opening Ceremony and then finishing off the podium in fourth in halfpipe.

“I would personally love to compete in halfpipe,” Gerard says. “I love that sport, I think it’s really fun. You can be really creative in it and you don’t have to spin as much. I think it’s really cool — though I probably like it so much because I don’t compete in it,” he laughs. “I’ll ride it all the time and think, I don’t know why I chose slopestyle — this is way more fun.

“Doing both of them is pretty hard to manage, but there are some skiers and snowboarders who do it.”

As we talk, Gerard completely affirms the view that I and, presumably, the rest of the world has of him — he’s a chill, laid-back kid who just happens to be completely excellent at this extremely competitive sport. But I asked him: How did he manage to become so high-achieving when he’s so easygoing? Did his family push him hard?

“I was always raised super laid-back, and my parents weren’t insanely strict at all. I didn’t ever really have a bedtime. But I really grew up with my brothers [Gerard has four brothers and two sisters] as my parents, if that makes sense. I think having so many family members and so many siblings makes you grow up feeling ready to take on life.”

Gerard’s brother, Brendan, got him on a snowboard when Red was two years old. He soon overtook all his siblings in ability and landed a Burton sponsorship at 11.

What were you doing at 11?

I mention that I’ve actually read Gerard’s sister, Tieghan’s, food blog Half Baked Harvest for years, and remark how incredible it is that his family has produced so many talented and driven children in what sounds like the most Type B environment of all time.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BfZwqggha9s/?hl=en&taken-by=halfbakedharvest

“My sister is amazing,” Gerard says. “Way more amazing than me. But I’m one of seven, so I guess one or two of them have to turn out decent.”

Decent is one way of putting it.

I asked if the Gerard family moved from Rocky River, Ohio, to Colorado specifically so that Red could train.

“No, not at all,” Gerard says. “My mom — she doesn’t really like when I say this — but my mom sort of had a mid-life crisis in Ohio. It can be pretty depressing in the winters. We did a couple vacations up in Colorado and we absolutely loved it so she was the one that sort of pulled the trigger. It definitely wasn’t for snowboarding. But if I was still living in Ohio, I don’t know…” Gerard laughs.

Yes, it’s highly unlikely an Olympic gold medalist could have come out of one of the country’s flattest states.

If it sounds borderline infuriating that someone could be the most accomplished in the world in his sport and simply be doing it for fun, it kind of is — and that’s coming from someone who, 15 years later, is finally accepting that my own snowboarding exploits are never going to progress past the blue-run variety.

But in his own way, Gerard embodies everything amazing about the snowboarding community. It’s composed of some of the world’s most impressive competitors, and yet almost across the board, they are the kindest and most down-to-earth athletes you’ll ever meet.

For our own sakes, let’s hope Gerard keeps doing this for fun for decades to come.