The Lawrenceburg native fell in love with skiing

at Perfect North and chased his dreams at three

Olympics, including the 2022 Games in Beijing.
But his longest and hardest journey has been
chasing peace and perspective.

By John Stowell
Page 57
 The
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jump.
He lowers his visor and blasts down the ter’s most popular sport. For perhaps everyone else on skis and
slope, feeling neither the warmth of the sun If you’ve ever watched the Winter X skates, though, the highest mountain is the
nor the chill of the morning air. All that mat- Games, you know Goepper has been both Winter Olympics—and that’s where Goep-
ters in these few seconds is speed, timing, the dominant slopestyle skier and the per is in February, soaking in the charm of

and a safe landing. But once airborne, Goep-
per is an acrobat, a showman, an artist.
As he rockets off the ramp, he crosses
his skis into an X and grabs one by the tail.
He tweaks it to give himself as fast a ro-
tation as possible. Spinning like a cork-
screw—which is what the trick is called—
he seems to defy gravity as he flips and
Comeback Kid. He won the gold in 2013,
2014, and 2015 before fading a bit until the
so-called “COVID X Games” last year, when
he again won gold.
The X Games are spectacular for the
viewing public, both in person and on
ESPN. Set among pine trees high above
Aspen, Colorado, it’s where slopestylers,
PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY (THIS SPREAD AND PREVIOUS) U.S. SKI & SNOWBOARD /
the Olympic Village, exploring the myster-
ies of China, and seeking the one medal he
doesn’t have: an Olympic gold.
Goepper is no stranger to the Olympics,
having won the bronze in the 2014 Sochi
Winter Games and silver in the 2018 Py-
eongChang Olympiad. The Chinese have
designed the slopestyle event to be as much
( F A M I LY P H O T O ) C O U R T E S Y L I N D A G O E P P E R

twists three times before a soft thud marks
the moment his skis reconnect with the
earth. Did I mention he lands backwards?
There is joy in his face and sometimes
an adrenaline-induced scream when he
lifts his visor after a good run. Goepper is
in love with the snow, the speed, and how
the danger and beauty of his event, known
as slopestyle skiing, has transformed win-
snowboarders, and aerialists strut their
best moves, hoping to leave the judges with
mouths agape at something they’ve never
seen before. “For our sport, the X Games
are our Super Bowl,” Goepper says with-
out hesitation. “It holds more value to the
core of our profession, and the talent pool
is usually higher because everyone wants
to be there.”
a cultural journey as it is a challenging
course. Goepper and his competitors will
ski down a mountain generously seeded
with steel rails and a jump ramp built to
resemble the Great Wall of China.
[Editor’s Note: The 2022 Winter Olym-
pics kicked off as this issue went to press.
You’ll know Goepper’s medal fate already
as you read this story.]

Page 58
The Genting Secret Garden Ski Resort north-
west of Beijing is a long way from the mod-
est 400-foot drop in Lawrenceburg, Indi-
ana, Goepper’s hometown. It’s where, at 5
years old, he strapped on his first pair of
skis at Perfect North Slopes.
“He climbed everything and jumped off
everything,” his mother, Linda Goepper, re-
calls. He had just learned to walk when Nick
toddled outside and onto the Goepper deck
in the Hidden Valley Lake community out-
side Lawrenceburg. Linda’s back was to the
deck when her visitor’s face changed to hor-
ror. Nick had somehow climbed the pickets
and was now crawling on the 2-inch-wide
deck rail, 20 feet above the ground.
And, with the pure joy only a 1-year-old
can express, he made it. Maybe that’s why
Goepper today rides the rails with both fe-
rocity and elegance.
Slopestyle skiing, besides requiring
aerial stunts off ramps, also features sets of
rails that skiers jump on and off, perform-
ing more aerial twists and turns as they
do. The rails are generally made of metal
and skiers land on them by launching off
a mogul or small bump in the terrain. The
slopestyle sound is disarming—the swoosh
of skis on the snow, the clatter of the skis on
the metal rail, the second or two of silence
in the air, and a running soft thud as the
skier moves on to the next obstacle.
It’s the kind of sport that, unlike alpine
skiing, doesn’t require a majestic moun-
tain with a 3,000-foot vertical drop and a
two-mile-long run. Perfect North, Goepper
says as he wolfs down a sub sandwich, was
the perfect place to learn the art of skiing.
“I could ski every day there, seven days a
week, 12 hours a day on weekends if I want-
ed to,” he says, laughing. “And I usually did.
You couldn’t keep me away.”
Tim Doll, Perfect North’s director of
operations, remembers how you could set
your clock on school days. “Nick would
show up 20 minutes after the bus dropped
him off from school, and he’d be here until
close if he could.” Goepper became such a
proficient skier that older kids with driver’s
licenses would pick him up and take him
home just so they could ski with him.
Goepper says he didn’t recognize it
until after he moved out west to ski in the
Rockies and Cascades, but Perfect North
provided him the perfect training ground.
Skiers born and raised out west, he came to
realize, had to leave the slopes when the sun
set. Perfect North, on the other hand, had
lights. You could ski from 9:30 in the morn-
ing until midnight. That’s a lot of reps, and
Goepper feasted on them.
As he was growing up, slopestyle ski-
ing was an emerging sport that was start-
ing to gain traction out west. Goepper and
the cadre of older kids he hung with on the
slopes were intrigued and became advo-
cates for bringing rails and ramps to Perfect
North, forming a group they called Freez-
ing Point 32. CONTINUED ON PAGE 82

“He climbed
everything
and jumped
off every-
thing,” Linda
Goepper says
of her son
Nick’s child-
hood in Law- SNOW BIG DEAL Nick Goepper ( these pages and previous spread ) compe tes

renceburg. at the Toyota U.S. Grand Pr ix at Mammoth Mountain, California, in

January, quite a leap from his childhood days in Indiana ( above left ).
NICK GOEPPER IS STILL UP IN THE AIR
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 59
The Lawrenceburg native fell in love with skiing
at Perfect North and chased his dreams at three
Olympics, including the 2022 Games in Beijing.
But his longest and hardest journey has been
chasing peace and perspective.
By John Stowell
Today, Goepper says proudly, the Perfect
North terrain park is as good as anything
you’ll see in Colorado, California, or Utah.
And you can still jump, spin, tumble, and
ride the rails past your bedtime.
“Somewhere around age 10 or 11, I began
to notice that some people had made ski-
ing their profession, and I was interested in
that,” he remembers. His mother recalls that,
at about the same time, he began to under-
stand the concept of time management. Go-
epper couldn’t continue competitive swim-
ming, playing organized baseball and soccer,
NICK GOEPPER’S BODY DEVELOPED, BUT MORE IMPOR-
TANTLY, HIS CREATIVITY FLOURISHED AFTER MOVING TO A
SKI ACADEMY IN OREGON. HE BEGAN EXPERIMENTING.
go to school, finish his homework, and still
spend as much time as he felt he needed at
Perfect North. It was time to focus.
Linda and his dad, Chris, were always
supportive, Goepper says, but they didn’t
push it. Linda says their philosophy with all
four of their children was to let them find
their own path and passion and learn from
their own mistakes. They provided parental
guidance, Linda says, but not mandates.
Goepper appreciates he wasn’t pushed
to ski. “I know too many kids who were
messed up by their parents because they
pushed them too hard and they burned out,”
he says. His parents encouraged his com-
petitive nature. “Even when I’d have little
tantrums on the snow,” he laughs.
By early high school, Goepper was clear-
ly the ski stud of southern Indiana. But he
wanted more—the toughest slopes, the
most challenging jumps, the best instruc-
tors, and a new set of friends who’d push
him past his limits. He found several ski
8 2 C I N C I N N AT I M A G A Z I N E . C O M M A R C H 2 0 2 2
boarding schools out west and began sell-
ing his parents on the idea of leaving East
Central High School.
His parents were flummoxed. Chris had
just lost his job in the recession, so money
was an issue. Nick’s skills had exceeded
anything they could comprehend, but they
wondered how he’d stack up against skiers
who were tearing down the sides of real
mountains. But Linda and Chris decided
he needed his shot. They had to help him
open that first door so their first-born
could see where it led. Turns out, it led to
slopestyle superstardom.
Over the summer between his fresh-
man and sophomore years of high school,
Chris and Linda took Nick to Okemo Ski
Resort in Vermont and to Lake Placid, New
York, where a well-known ski instructor
agreed to evaluate him on water ramps and
the trampoline. That led to an invitation
to train in Utah with one of the country’s
venerable daredevil skiing coaches, Mike
Wilson, and a second invite to participate
in a water rail jam competition in San Jose,
California. When he won, Goepper was
offered a full scholarship at Windells Ski
Academy in Oregon.
“The biggest thing with Nick wasn’t
the tricks,” Mike Hanley, his Windells
Academy coach recalls. “It was the crash-
es he was taking. They were spectacular,
but he kept getting up and trying. It’s that
determination that has allowed him to ac-
complish what he has.”
Hanley, who was one of those judges at
the San Jose water rail jam, laughs when
he recalls Goepper’s first year at Windells
(which has been renamed Wy’East Moun-
tain Academy) in 2009. “He hated me,” he
says matter-of-factly. “These action sports
are lifestyle sports, and so much of what
these skiers do is tied to their personal-
ity and their core as a human being. You
tell someone that they’re doing something
wrong? It’s kind of like telling someone
they don’t have the right eye color.”
Goepper won’t admit he “hated” Hanley,
who also taught humanities at the academy.
But he does say the first year was rough. He
had expected a glamorous ski resort with
groomed runs, high tech classrooms, a nice
lodge, and lots of kids his age who were
laser-focused on skiing. “Yeah, I didn’t
know that it rains like nine months out of
the year in Oregon and there were going to
be only about eight other students in my
class and most of them were there because
their parents were rich and they just wanted
to have a good time,” he recalls. He was a
15-year-old Midwestern boy far from home
and very serious about his sport. He won-
dered if he’d made a mistake.
He hadn’t. Windells, he says, is where
he learned to become a champion skier.
His body developed, but more importantly
his creativity flourished. He began experi-
menting with new jumps off the ramp and
rails. He worked on the trampoline and
with inline skates. He learned to surf and
mountain bike. But all of it was designed,
purposefully, to develop muscles and coor-
dination that would help him on the snow.
Linda noticed that the focus was ex-
tending to the classroom. “I remember talk-
ing to him when he was in Europe with Mike
[Hanley] and they’d spent the whole day
discussing the Protestant Reformation,”
she says, laughing. “I thought to myself,
Hmmm, I wonder how that went.”
Flash forward to 2014 and the Sochi
Olympics. Goepper was the two-time
defending X Games champion and the
consensus favorite to win gold in the first-
ever Olympic slopestyle competition. He
finished third behind two other American
skiers in what the press called a red, white,
and blue sweep.
Winning an Olympic medal is tough,
but it doesn’t get any easier when you re-
turn home. The media’s appetite is insa-
tiable. So are the corporate sponsors and
the public. Goepper and his fellow medal-
ists, Joss Christensen and Gus Kenworthy,
hit the road for what seemed like an endless
round of interviews, public appearances
and photo shoots. It was exhausting and,
for Goepper, disorienting.
DEPRESSION, WE KNOW NOW, IS A REAL
issue. It’s not uncommon among athletes,
NICK GOEPPER IS STILL UP IN THE AIR

particularly those who compete in individ-
ual sports. But this was 2014, before Sim-
one Biles walked away from the gymnas-
tics competition in Tokyo. Before Olympic
swimmers Michael Phelps and Allison
Schmitt acknowledged their mental health
issues. Golfer Rory McIlroy and basketball
great Brittney Griner had not yet opened up
about their journeys.
In 2014, depression was kept in the
dark, to be suffered and treated silently.
Broken bones were acceptable; broken
minds were not.
Goepper was just 20 years old and had
spent more than half of his life perfecting
his art. He’d taken the world by storm in two
straight X Games, when millions of view-
ers watched in awe at his acrobatics. He was
a social media star and had picked up sev-
eral corporate sponsorships. He was a slam-
dunk to win the first-ever Olympic gold in
slopestyle skiing. And, can you believe it, the
media gushed, he’s from Indiana!
Winning the bronze was a blow, and
it had to have been agony to go on David
Letterman, The Today Show, ESPN, and
more than 60 other appearances playing
the unwanted role as the caboose on the
Slopestyle Train. Goepper had trained re-
lentlessly to win, and, man, it was so hard
to smile.
“Every ounce of your life is on that one
moment when you’re competing at the
highest level, and then that moment is
gone,” says Hanley. “You wake up the next
morning and there’s no rapture. It’s over
and you come home, and everybody is say-
ing the same thing: Wasn’t that great? And
you say ‘yes’ but you don’t really mean it
because you can’t tell people you feel like,
Well, if that’s as good as life gets.. . ”
His voice trails off and you realize that,
while it’s Mike Hanley who’s explaining
this post-Olympics black hole, he’s really
channeling Goepper.
Nick isn’t afraid to admit he lost his way.
He began to drink heavily and withdraw
emotionally from the world. He waited
for nightfall because, he says, that’s when
time slowed down and he felt more at peace.
He contemplated suicide, even driving to
a canyon in Utah where slopestyle skier
Jeret “Speedy” Peterson had killed himself
in 2011, less than 18 months after winning
an Olympic silver medal. Fortunately, Go-
epper says, he wasn’t “ballsy” enough to
follow through.
“I didn’t have the right perspective,” he
says now. “I thought skiing and my success
at skiing was the sole measurement of me
as a person. I was a skier, and that’s all I was.”
Returning home, Goepper acted out by
throwing rocks at passing cars, damaging
several. He was charged with criminal mis-
chief. He apologized, made restitution, and
entered a diversion program. Then, with the
help of the U.S. Olympic Committee, he en-
tered a rehab facility in Texas.
Goepper says he’s emerged a better
person, understanding he’s not “healed”
but in control. He had a relapse after the
2018 games in South Korea, and Linda says

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8 4 C I N C I N N AT I M A G A Z I N E . C O M M A R C H 2 0 2 2
that episode resulted in doctors determin-
ing he suffered from bipolar II disorder.
Symptoms aren’t as intense as the bipolar
disorder most are familiar with, but it’s a
challenging condition that requires mind-
ful monitoring. Linda admits she’s nervous
about the weeks following these Olympics,
but she’s quick to say Goepper is better
prepared today to recognize “the spiral,” as
she calls it, and get help.
Hanley, who Linda says knows Nick as
well as anyone, has a less clinical term for
his friend. “He’s an eccentric introvert,” he
declares, “and that’s not unusual for those
in extreme sports.” Sometimes the ex-
tremely introverted personality overcom-
pensates and becomes the wild man. That’s
not Goepper.
“For years, he seemed like he was always
the odd man out, coming from Indiana and
living a clean life,” Hanley recalls.“He didn’t
do drugs or booze, and he was always one to
not brag and just let his accomplishments
speak for themselves.”
Goepper says he realizes now that he
literally was skiing through life without a
plan. He likes to quote Heath Ledger’s Joker
from the movie The Dark Knight. “Do I re-
ally look like a guy with a plan?” he recites,
sounding more like the boy next door than
the grotesquely painted villain hovering over
Harvey Dent’s hospital bed.“You know what
I am? I’m just a dog chasing cars. I wouldn’t
know what to do with one if I caught it.”
Truth is, Goepper has already caught a
dog—just not the dog, which is that elusive
Olympic gold medal. The dog he’s caught is
peace, perspective, and the beginnings of a
plan for his life on the snow and off.
“I’m really proud of him,” Linda says.
“He’s been through a lot, but he’s so much
better now. He’s been exposed to a lot
more suicides than anyone his age should,
and that takes a toll. But he’s seeing a
counselor, living healthy, and he’s as happy
as I’ve ever seen him.”
Goepper has his own playland behind
his Salt Lake City home that captures his
love of life. It’s a replica of his backyard in
Lawrenceburg, with a 15-foot-tall ski ramp,
a trampoline, basketball court, climbing
wall, skateboard track, and ramps and rails.
It’s a popular meeting place for the kids in
the neighborhood who he lets in, but only
if they come to his front door first and agree
to strictly obey his safety rules.
“I even have my picture on the fence,” he
laughs. “I call it Goepperland, and the kids
love it. I just make sure none of their par-
ents are lawyers.”
In one of his many entertaining Ins-
tagram posts, Goepper is standing at the
bottom of a run, shirtless with arms out-
stretched. Three skiers in succession barrel
at him off camera, braking hard and inundat-
ing him in clouds of snow. A high-pitched
“woo-hoo” is all you hear before he turns
toward the camera with the look of a guy
who, at heart, is still that toddler joyously
crawling on his parents’ deck rail. And like
that toddler, Goepper is again completely
comfortable in his own (chilly) skin.

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