Pyeongchang,
\nWild winds disrupted the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics today as a 17-year-old American snowboarder made history by becoming the first Games gold<\/p>\n
medallist born this millennium. Aged 17 and 227 days, Gerard handed the US their first gold of the Pyeongchang Games with his slopestyle win, making him the<\/p>\n
youngest US Winter Olympic champion since 1928. Gerard, born on June 29, 2000, also set a record for the youngest gold medallist in any snowboarding<\/p>\n
event that was held previously by Kelly Clark, the 2002 women’s halfpipe champion at age 18 years and 199 days.<\/p>\n
\u201cI cannot believe it,\u201d Gerard said. \u201cI’m shaking right now, maybe from the cold, or the excitement. I don’t know. But I’m ecstatic. I can’t believe it. I’m super-<\/p>\n
psyched!\u201d said Gerard, who wants to attend film school for the next two years.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’d have to guess people are pretty surprised,\u201d Gerard said. \u201cI had a lot of fun and all I really want to do is just land runs.\u201d<\/p>\n
From deathbed to Olympics glory<\/p>\n
Eleven months ago Mark McMorris was fighting for his life after breaking 17 bones and suffering a collapsed lung and ruptured spleen in a snowboarding<\/p>\n
accident. Today he won Olympic bronze. The 24-year-old staked an early claim for the most inspirational story at the Pyeongchang Winter Games in the<\/p>\n
snowboard slopestyle, sealing third behind compatriot Max Parrot, in silver, and Amercian teenage gold medallist Gerard.<\/p>\n
Talking after winning bronze, McMorris reflected on his journey from near-death to worldwide headline maker. \u201cI don’t want to think too much about the past<\/p>\n
today, but I appreciate the fact I’m here on my snowboard,\u201d he said. \u201cWhatever the outcome was today, just me being pumped on being able to ride a<\/p>\n
snowboard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Pyeongchang, Wild winds disrupted the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics today as a 17-year-old American snowboarder made history by becoming the first Games gold medallist […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21700,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21699"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21699\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21701,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21699\/revisions\/21701"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}