PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — 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.