Close to two decades ago, Red Gerard sat in front of his family’s television in Rocky River, Ohio and watched the Winter X Games, mouth agape, taking in one of the first professional snowboard competitions he had ever seen.

At the time, the adolescent Gerard had no idea that this experience would serve as the first building block that would eventually lead to his own success within the snowsports industry.

Eventually, Gerard’s family made the move out to Colorado. He gained a sponsorship with Burton, made multiple X Games appearances and made two Olympic teams, winning a gold medal at the 2018 Winter Games in PyeongChang at the age of 17.

Despite the massive wave of success over the years, there was one major milestone that has always seemed to escape him — winning a gold medal at the X Games. 

After seven appearances at the highly-celebrated event, Gerard officially added an X Games gold medal to his long list of accolades. He was crowned the champion of the men’s snowboard slopestyle competition on Sunday, Jan. 28, under sunny skies at Aspen Buttermilk. 

Gerard won the event with three landed runs, where each outshined the last and earned a better score from the judges. Gerard led the 10-man field with a score of 96.33 after the second round of runs, but he laid down an almost flawless final run that earned him a score of 97 and sealed the victory over slopestyle veteran Mark McMorris of Canada.

Gerard’s winning run was highlighted by the jump section where the 23-year-old rider was able to land a cab double cork 1080, a switch backside 1620 and a backside 1800. Gerard said he has been thinking about landing a run like that for a while and drew inspiration for the run during preseason training while in Europe.

“When we go to the training trips over in Europe, I just try to think of a little bit of a run idea while I am out there and try to learn those tricks,” Gerard said. “From there, I try to stay committed to that run. I knew that the backside 1800 was something that is going to happen a lot at contests now, so it was something that I needed to learn. Just adding that with the switch backside 1620 was kind of what I wanted the run to look like.”

With only a X Games bronze medal to his name from the 2020 event, finally receiving an X Games gold medal shows Gerard’s dedication to the sport and how he has developed since he was admiring X Games athletes on TV as a kid.

“I have been lucky enough to win a couple of events. It really felt like that was the one I was missing,” Gerard said of his X Games gold. “To get that locked down was really a dream come true. It was probably the first snowboarding competition I ever watched. To say I have a gold medal from it is pretty incredible.”

Although Gerard successfully won gold, he did admit there was a short period of time when he was unsure if it was actually going to happen. After finishing his final run and improving his score by almost a full point, McMorris still had to drop in for his final run, threatening Gerard’s spot at the top of the podium.

Known for bumping people from the podium, McMorris tried to improve upon his first-run score of 95 and sky rocket into the top spot, but he ultimately came up short, scoring 96 to place second with Norway’s Mons Roisland winning bronze. 

“He’s definitely the last guy you want to be dropping when you are in first,” Gerard said of McMorris. “Either way, there was a big weight lifted off my shoulders before dropping into my last run knowing I was on the podium. For me, I was hoping he would land a run and hopefully it wouldn’t beat mine or however it went.”

Whether Gerard ended up winning gold or falling down to the silver-medal position, the competition was already a huge success since he was able to land all of his runs the way he had envisioned them.

“I always just say I want to go out there and try to land runs,” Gerard said. “To land three of those runs, it really isn’t up to me after that. I was happy with how I was able to ride there, but it was definitely nerve wracking — there is no doubt about that.”

Gerard’s X Games gold medal marks his third podium finish out of the four competitions he has competed in so far this season. Gerard began the season with third-place finishes in Edmonton and at the Visa Big Air competition at Copper Mountain Resort before barely missing the podium at Laax Open in Switzerland, placing sixth.

After only competing a handful of times last year in order to recenter and refocus after the 2022 Winter Olympic Games, Gerard feels like the time away from competing was necessary and has helped him immensely this competition season. 

“I think that helped me out a whole ton, honestly,” Gerard said. “It was really good and something that I needed there to take a look at my career as a whole and take a break from contests. I realized that I really do love competing, snowboarding and all that. It was huge for me and something I was definitely really happy to do.”

Gerard may have taken a break from the rigorous slopestyle and big air snowboard contests, but the snowboard-crazed rider was still busy making turns, using his time and energy to put together his first snowboard short film — “Short & Sweet” — with his girlfriend, Hailey Langland, brother, Malachi Gerard, fellow snowboarder, Ben Ferguson, and other riders. 

The 18-minute film that was posted on Gerard’s YouTube channel back in November highlights Gerard’s passion for riding outside of a competition setting and enjoying snowboarding in one of its purest forms. The time spent filming in the backcountry not only allowed Gerard to take some of the pressure off himself to perform, but also helped Gerard to reawaken his creative side.

“I think it helped a little bit, more of just the vision of how you look at a slopestyle course — trying to look at things a little bit more creatively and doing things differently,” Gerard said.

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Gerard was scheduled to compete for another medal at the Toyota U.S. Grand Prix men’s snowboard slopestyle competition at Mammoth Mountain in California, but the competition was canceled on Friday, Feb. 2, due to wind and snow and will not be rescheduled.

With the competition canceled, Gerard will now turn his focus to the Natural Selection Duels competition against Austen Sweetin before getting back into the backcountry to film more content.

Gerard plans to release another short-form film from the backcountry onto his YouTube channel at some point following the 2023-24 season.

Gerard said, “I personally like those smaller, little YouTube videos that everyone can watch and you don’t have to pay for it and all that. Not a massive project, just a smaller, little one, previewing some snowboarding.”