In January 2023, as most of his peers were in Aspen getting ready to compete at X Games, Nick Goepper posted an announcement on social media: He was retiring from competitive skiing, effective immediately.
For the first time since he was 14, Goepper watched the event at home on TV, purely as a fan. The FOMO he expected to feel wasn’t there. According to the Indiana native, that was “the one moment when I knew that I made the right decision.”
Ten months later, though, Goepper announced his return to competition — with a twist — and began the process of reinventing himself, both as a skier and a person. What’s unfolded over the last two years has him in position to potentially earn his first Olympic gold medal, but not in the discipline that was once his bread and butter for over a decade.
Goepper, now 31, has built a legacy for himself as a slopestyle skier ever since making his pro debut nearly 15 years ago. He was the first (and so far only) skier to win four X Games slopestyle titles, and he’s the only skier to win slopestyle medals at three straight Winter Olympics. At the 2014 Sochi Games, where he earned bronze, he was part of a historic U.S. podium sweep.
But by the end of the last Olympics, Goepper was experiencing burnout. He knew something had changed once November rolled around and, for the first time in his life, the energy and anticipation that normally came with the start of a new ski season just wasn’t there.
“It felt like something was wrong with me,” Goepper recalled. “It was weird. It was almost like I was in a relationship, and then I was falling out of love with this person that I loved my entire life.”
So he retired. The announcement came on Jan. 27, 2023, the day that X Games was getting underway in Aspen, Colorado.
There were a lot of unknowns. What would the next chapter look like for Goepper? Would sponsors be willing to stick by him while he figured it out?
As it turns out, taking time away from the sport allowed the passion to creep back in. Goepper was beginning to grow restless and bored, but his body still felt good, so he began pondering what a return might look like.
“I decided that I wanted to reinvent myself and my approach to the sport, but do it in a slightly different way,” he said. “In a way that wasn't the same, but it rhymed. And that was with halfpipe.”
Although Goepper had done a bit of pipe skiing years before, this was mostly a new experience for him. He found that the tricks from slopestyle translated well to halfpipe, but gaining the fundamentals for halfpipe skiing required patience and dedication. In November 2023, just 10 months after his retirement, he announced his return to competitive skiing and switch to halfpipe.
During his first season of halfpipe competition, Goepper kept his expectations low. He was focused on dialing in the basics and having fun, and he wore jeans during his contest runs.
“I knew I wasn't going to be winning the first season, so I skied the entire season in jeans to send a fun message to my fans and fans of skiing,” said Goepper, who grew up skiing at a tiny resort in Indiana, and once sold candy bars and performed odd jobs in an attempt to raise money to attend a ski academy.
“They represent my Midwest roots of resourcefulness and frugality. Like, hey, you don't have to buy $500 expensive pants to go skiing. You can just do it in your jeans.”
Goepper’s mindset got much more serious as he entered his second season of halfpipe. He purchased 40 acres of land in the Nevada desert to build a training facility he dubbed “Rollerblade Ranch.” There, he used rollerblades, a 13-foot wooden quarterpipe and a massive airbag to practice new tricks.
One such trick was a variation of a “bone air,” a maneuver pioneered by Canadian freeskier Justin Dorey. Goepper’s 900-degree version, also referred to as a switch misty 900, was a unique, ground-breaking trick that became a signature element of his runs last season.
“I knew that coming into halfpipe, there were all these runs that were already being done, all these existing tricks,” Goepper said. “I knew that if I wanted to stand out and make a splash, I had to do something new that nobody else was doing.”
Goepper stopped wearing jeans and started winning contests. He topped the podium at a World Cup event in December, then won X Games gold in January. According to X Games, he’s just the third skier in the event’s history to win titles in both slopestyle and halfpipe.
Now in his third season of halfpipe, Goepper has emerged as a bona fide gold medal contender for the Milan Cortina Olympics. (He still needs to secure his spot on the U.S. Olympic team via a series of selection events, but he'll be favored to do so as long as he stays healthy.) Other leading contenders include American Alex Ferreira, who went undefeated during the 2023-24 season, and New Zealand’s Finley Melville Ives, who won gold at the 2025 World Championships.
Goepper, who has been very open about the mental health challenges he’s faced since his first Olympics, feels better equipped to handle the threat of burnout this time around. He’s made small but important changes to his life, such as making sure to get out of bed in the morning and making time to check in with friends, family and his long-time therapist.
He’s learned that change is a part of life, and it’s normal for a person’s passions to ebb and flow at times. “It might be temporary, it might be permanent, but that's OK, you change,” he said. “It's OK to enjoy that new change.”
He’s also been sober for the last 10 years. After the 2014 Sochi Olympics, Goepper dealt with a drinking problem, depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts, all of which led to him spending two months in a rehab facility in fall 2015.
“After the 2014 Games and 2018 Games, I found myself in a place of aimlessness and sort of lost,” he said. “Like, what's my purpose? What am I doing?”
It’s uncertain what Goepper will decide to do after these Olympics — “I'm taking it one year at a time,” he says — but he has big plans for Livigno. He’s been working on two new tricks, one of which is an upgraded version of the bone air with one more flip and one more invert: a switch double misty 1260, a trick which has never been done before in the halfpipe. He intends to unveil it at some point this season.
So far, Goepper’s Olympic career has netted two silver medals (2018, 2022) and one bronze medal (2014). He could potentially become the first American to win a medal in an individual event at four different Winter Olympics, and his longevity in freeskiing surprises even himself.
“If you'd asked me five years ago if I'd be here,” he said, “I would have thought you were crazy.”
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