Life From Slopestyle To Slope Ratings

Olympic gold medalist Red Gerard on his latest obsession: golf.

- Keely Levins

There’s a laid-back quality to Red Gerard. He’s thoughtful and funny, never rushing. It suggests an unforced confidence, the kind of self-assuredness most teens would love to have. -- But then, Gerard is far from a normal teen. He won the first gold medal for Team USA in the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics. The event was Slopestyle, where snowboarders fly down the course, riding on rails and hitting jumps, hurling their bodies through the air. At 17, he was the youngest U.S. snowboarding gold medalist ever.

Gerard and two of his brothers recently moved from Colorado to Carlsbad, Calif. While there, he’s been playing a lot of golf—a game his dad, Conrad, introduced him to as a 10-year-old.