Athlete Profile
(Re)Brand New: Goepper’s Next Move
By Vince Castellanos
By Vince Castellanos
Nick Goepper acts the nerd in front of a white board, Volkl skis -- one of his two remaining sponsors -- leaning against the wall. With tape on his glasses and tie loosened, the X Games champ pulls a marker from his shirt pocket and addresses the assumption that skiing is for the rich.
The Instagram clip is a bit, sorta, an attempt at relevance in a space Goepper once found uncomfortable and often avoided. Instead, Goepper went the traditional route: a play-it-straight smalltown Indiana native who became a clean-cut action sports star. Or as he puts it: “I was the goody two-shoes competition guy for a decade.”
His four gold medals are the most in X Games Men’s Ski Slopestyle. He’s the only person with three Olympic ski slopestyle medals. Goepper graced a Corn Flakes box and appeared in parades. He flirted with Taylor Swift in an NBC promo and posed with her on the Golden Globes red carpet 10 years before a flyover country football player became world famous by Swiftie association.
But now, the 29-year-old is about those clicks. He’s doffing his sponsor-free knit cap in a post to reveal a growing bald spot surrounded by hair he dyed Smurf-blue for a different post. He’s dropping F-bombs. He’s taking on the powerful FIS -- skiing’s gateway to the Olympics -- in funny and informative posts like this one that has more than 1.2 million views on Instagram.
Oh, and he’s coming out of a short-lived retirement to pursue an entirely new ski discipline. What?
A Quick Recap
In January 2023, Goepper made public his decision to stop competing. “I started considering retirement when I stopped having fun skiing,” he says now, 12 months later.
He can’t pinpoint exactly when that happened, but he remembers the feeling. “Things got really repetitive and became a grind; I was just checking boxes,” he says. “People told me to cash checks and milk it, but I couldn’t do that in good conscience. I didn’t want anyone thinking that I’d be a good asset for them when I knew I wasn’t.”
Goepper viewed X Games Aspen 2023 from his couch. “I was kinda shitting myself -- I thought I’d start crying or have regrets watching this thing I’d loved since I was a kid,” he recalls. “But I felt great! I was cheering for my friends standing up in my living room thinking, ‘I made the right decision.’ I felt awesome."
That didn’t last long. Goepper didn’t miss slopestyle, but he missed working toward a goal and testing himself. A few weeks after XG Aspen, Goepper traveled to Red Bull PlayStreets in Austria. There, he got hung up on a wallride that led to an entertaining blooper with more than 4 million views on his Instagram feed.
A Transition to Transition
PlayStreets also lit a spark. “I’ve always been good at riding transition,” says Goepper, who also skateboards and in-line skates. “Then I started thinking about halfpipe, and I saw a massive opportunity. Why not try it?”
He booked a stealth mission to Laax, Switzerland, in March and skied the superpipe for two weeks. “No one knew I was doing it,” he says. “Totally incognito. But I had to see if I could get joy from it.”
He loved it. Next step? Did he have the skills to compete. Goepper crashed a Mammoth Mountain training camp in May and learned double corks in all four directions in a span of two weeks. You can count on one hand the number of people who have landed four-way doubles in a pipe contest, so Goepper knew he was close.
He also caught the attention of pros in attendance. “They were like, ‘Yo, what is he doing?’” Goepper says with a chuckle. A trip to Mt. Hood followed in the summer. By then, he felt ready to commit. “I left Mt. Hood thinking L-F-G. Let’s go.”
One problem: He lost most sponsorship when he retired, and chasing the dream ain’t cheap.
The Rebrand
Goepper was never an active social media user and had been stuck on about 108,000 Instagram followers for years. It had been nearly six months since his last IG appearance when this post claiming to want a social media manager for a rebrand popped up out of nowhere in August 2023. Was it a bit? Was he serious?
“Necessity is the mother of invention,” Goepper says. “You’d be surprised what you can do when you have to. My season used to cost me $50,000 and I have $20,000 in income, so I needed to figure it out.”
He started with a second mortgage and accumulating debt, but that’s unsustainable. Goepper’s skiing always did the selling for him, but that wasn’t enough anymore. He needed to appeal to potential partners. Texas-based marketer Lizzy Levine saw Goepper’s pitch post and was intrigued. She recreated it -- right down to the poster on the wall and Dollar Tree sunglasses -- and DM’d Goepper until he answered.
Goepper hired her, and between the two of them, along with input from friends, content ideas began flowing. There’s cringe, but there’s also truth. In his nerdy professor post and similar ones days later, Goepper provides concrete ways to cut costs on a tight budget. I -- a fellow Midwestern boy from a blue-collar background -- feel it. My friends and I grew up riding in jeans on cheap used equipment at a Michigan ski bump where you can still snag a lift ticket for $33.
People now identify with Goepper. No one understands what it’s like to score multiple X Games and Olympic medals, but heaps have lived Nick’s struggles with depression, divorce and debt, which he lays out in this funny, raw post that has 360,000 views.
“There’s a lot of ways to make noise and get people to notice you,” he says. “You can inspire, you can be controversial, you can reveal your body [and collect 1 million views in the process]. People always said, ‘Use your platform!’ and I never understood that.”
He’s getting there. Goepper says being honest remains, “Extremely hard. Extremely f**king hard. The posts I know are gonna blow up are the ones where I’m about to hit ‘post’ and my heart is beating as fast as it does before a competition run. But people like that. They like authenticity.
“I never saw myself being social media goofy guy, but I’m actually loving it,” he continues. “I have so many people in the community telling me how awesome these cringe posts are. I wasn’t expecting that. I thought there might be hate for, like, talking about my lunch, but I’ve been welcomed with open arms.”
Keeping it real resonates. “I. Love. Skiing, and I think people sense that,” he says. “I’m trying to be the most genuine I can be.”
The millions of views has translated into a 16 percent increase in Instagram followers in about four months, which is a huge jump in the relatively stagnant ski landscape. He’s still waiting on the dollars, but contest results will help.
X Games Aspen Surprise
On that front, he made a splash in December: Competing in his first FIS World Cup pipe event (and first pipe comp at all since 2016), Goepper put down a solid qualifying run and made the final in a big field. He announced his qualification for the final in another high-engaging post that had some asking about his sanity.
He impressed again in the final, finishing 4th ahead of multiple X Games SuperPipe gold medalists. An X Games Aspen 2024 invite followed, capping a meteoric rise created in part from sheer work: He goes hard. Goepper says his favorite part of X Games is practice, because he has a dedicated snowmobile to help him lap the pipe. “I can take 40 runs in the time someone else might do 10,” he says.
But 29-year-olds don’t suddenly start competing in superpipe. It’s unprecedented. Goepper will be the oldest first-time SuperPipe athlete in X Games history, ski or snowboard. His response to that news? “No way!” he says with a laugh. “Hell yeah! I love that!”
Others might be surprised by Goepper’s quick pipe success, but he isn’t. In fact, he has audacious expectations for X Games Aspen 2024. “I’ll be on the podium,” he states without hesitation. There’s a pause, then he grins broadly. Is it a bit or does he believe it? Why not both? Nick Goepper is betting on himself. Why would anyone want to bet against him?