After Starting in Last Place, Red Gerard,17, Wins First U.S Gold Medal at 2018 Winter Olympics

Team USA’s first gold medal has been won, and the athlete who won it is among the youngest to ever win gold.

Red Gerard, a 17-year old snowboarder from Colorado, came storming back from last place to win gold and become the youngest Olympic snowboarder to ever medal. Ranked 11th going into his final run, Gerard pulled off some incredible moves and scored a whopping 87.16 to pull ahead of the rest of the pack. Gerard also became the second-youngest male competitor to win a medal in an individual event.

The youngest, Finland’s Toni Nieminen, was 16 when he won ski jumping gold in 1992.

Possibly sealing the deal for Gerard on his epic final run, was a backside triple cork 1440. That, along with the rest of his historic final run, was good enough to vault the Colorado-native over the ten competitors ranked ahead of him.

Watch Gerard’s final run here:

https://twitter.com/MysteriousLucid/status/962658712266641408?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fhollywoodlife.com%2F2018%2F02%2F11%2Fred-gerard-wins-first-gold-medal-usa-snowboarding-slopestyle-olympics-2018%2F

After his final run, Gerard said, “it feels incredible. I’m just really happy that I got to land a run and I’m just really excited right now. It was awesome. I just told myself that I want to land a run… I was a little bummed on my first two runs because I fell a couple of times.”