It’s easy to think that Red Gerard has all the luck. The Rocky River, Ohio native turned Colorado snowboard road-tripper stunned the snowboarding world with a gold medal run in the snowboard slopestyle event in Pyeongchang on Saturday, earning the U.S.’s first gold medal at the 2018 Winter Olympic games.
Yet, as this terrific profile by the Washington Post’s Adam Kilgore shows, Gerard’s life isn’t all roses. His snowboarding commitments mean that he has had to continue school solely via online classes since 2014, and that he’s still wistful about the friends and school he left behind.