Take it as Red: US teen makes history
11 Feb 2018 5:00 PM GMT
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 born this millennium.
Red Gerard, born on June 29, 2000, celebrated a storming win in slopestyle, which also made him the second youngest individual winner in Games history.
"I'm super-psyched!" said Gerard, adding: "I cannot believe it. I'm shaking right now, maybe from the cold or the excitement, I don't know. But I'm ecstatic. I can't believe it." Slopestyle was one of the events that did not fall victim to high winds on Sunday, when the showpiece men's downhill skiing was aborted until Thursday following a pre-dawn meeting of ski chiefs.
Later, as the gusts continued to swirl around Pyeongchang, the women's slopestyle qualification was scrapped with the competitors all going straight into Monday's final.
A day of extremes started with a surprise earthquake alert, after a 4.7-magnitude quake rattled eastern South Korea, with its epicentre about 260 kilometres (160 miles) from the Games. South Korea isn't known for deadly earthquakes, but organisers gave assurances that the Olympic venues had been built to stand up to a major tremor.
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