TGR Olympic Profile: Nick Goepper

The Olympic Games bring the world’s best to the snow, but the stories behind their runs are just as compelling as the medals they chase. Teton Gravity Research profiles the athletes who define their sports—skiers, snowboarders, and freestyle competitors pushing the limits of progression, resilience, and creativity. From career milestones and comeback seasons to signature styles and defining Olympic moments, this series offers an inside look at the athletes shaping winter sports at the highest level.

In hindsight, Nick Goepper's qualification for the 2026 Olympics in Milan-Cortina was far fetched. After calling it quiets after the 2022 Olympics, his return to the top flight of free-skiing is remarkable. For starters, he's pivoted, moving on from big ramps into the precise, high consequence world of halfpipe. The discipline change signals the start of a new era for Goepper altogether.

At 31, Goepper has already lived several athletic lifetimes. He burst onto the Olympic scene as a teenager, securing a bronze medal in slopestyle in Sochi 2014.

After the successful podium in Sochi, however, Goepper's life took a turn. He battled substance abuse and depression, eventually checking into rehab. Now sober for more than a decade, he’s become one of the sport’s most candid voices on mental health. Keeping life on track off the mountain is the most important aspect of his success in skiing, he says.

Miraculously, he returned to the Olympics emphatically with silver medals in slopestyle at both PyeongChang 2018 and Beijing 2022. After Beijing, Goepper walked away convinced there was nothing more for him to achieve.

“I was fully done,” he said of his burnout in a Team USA profile. Still, a year later, sitting at home in Salt Lake City, something shifted. The competitive itch was bubbling up again. Goepper just needed a new outlet.

He would find it in a new discipline altogether: freeski halfpipe.

Risky, unforgiving, and a totally different flow from traditional slopestyle, the pipe offered Goepper a return to rosy days as a teenager learning new tricks back in Indiana. The unmistakable feeling of progression came to fuel his sessions once again.

The fire was back. By early 2025, Goepper won his first X Games gold in Halfpipe (his fifth overall), and backed it up with a silver medal at the world championships. The comeback was in full swing.

As he eyes what could be his final Olympic run, the goal is still gold. But Nick has eyes on the bigger picture, too. That includes health, longevity, and building a life after skiing.

If Milan marks the end, it won’t be a farewell tour. It’ll be the culmination of a career built on survival, honesty, and the courage to start over when everyone thought the story was already written.

Country: United States
Hometown / Base: Fort Wayne, Indiana / Salt Lake City, Utah
Age: 31
Sport: Freeskiing
Discipline: Halfpipe

Olympic Resume:
• Three-time Olympian (2014, 2018, 2022)
• Bronze — Slopestyle, Sochi 2014
• Silver — Slopestyle, PyeongChang 2018
• Silver — Slopestyle, Beijing 2022

Career Highlights:
• Five-time X Games gold medalist
• 2025 X Games Superpipe gold (first halfpipe title)
• 2025 World Championships silver — Halfpipe
• One of the most decorated American freeskiers of his generation

2025–26 Outlook:
Drawing experience in other disciplines, Goepper is a serious halfpipe medal threat.

Strengths / Signature Style:
Technical precision, repetition-based progression, mental resilience, and competitive composure.

Injury Updates:

None reported.