Photograph courtesy Jackson Karsteter
In this year’s Milano Cortina Olympic Games, Lawrenceburg, Indiana, native Nick Goepper faced the slopes for the fourth time. He first strapped on his skis to earn bronze in the Olympic slopestyle event in 2014 at 19 years old, followed by two silver-medal runs in 2018 and 2022.
This year, though, 32-year-old Goepper switched from slopestyle to the halfpipe. Although both events involve performing tricks, slopestyle requires skiers to navigate obstacles, rails, and jumps on a downhill slope, while halfpipe allows for more acrobatic spins and flips.
Yet, for the first time, Goepper didn’t medal in the games. Although he finished second in the qualifiers, his third and last run during the finals crashed when he fell from 20 feet in the air and slammed into the deck of the halfpipe after attempting a switch double misty 1260—a trick he’d been practicing for a year that features a backward takeoff, 2.5 flips in the air, two rotations, and a backward landing. He placed fourth.
If you thought this would put a damper on his ski career, you’d be wrong. Goepper is already looking ahead to the 2030 Olympics, and he attributes his comfort to his renewed love for the sport following a nearly year-long hiatus at age 28. Training is less demanding these days. “Instead of just traveling 12 months a year and skiing everywhere and never stopping, I’m more careful about when I ski, how much I ski, and how hard I go,” he says. “There’s really two types of skiing that I do.”
First, the “super gnarly” work, which includes rigorous practice and training with coaches. To learn advanced maneuvers, he repeatedly skis off ramps and practices in the air, landing on airbags “the size of your house” to minimize the risk of injury before mastering the trick. When not on the slopes, he practices tricks in adjacent sports—biking, rollerblading, surfing—that mimic the motions of skiing, which helps build confidence in movement while avoiding burnout.
Second, the “play”: “No coaches, no structure, no time limits,” says Goepper. “Just doing this thing the same way I did it when I was 15 and learning how to be creative.”
Photograph courtesy Jackson Karsteter
Playing on the slopes is something that Jackson Karsteter knows well. The 22-year-old freestyle skier, also from Lawrenceburg, is on the slopes of Perfect North at least six days a week, spending five to eight hours running down the slopes and perfecting tricks over and over again. It may sound strenuous, but Karsteter often goes with friends, who record each other’s moves—including what Karsteter says is a never-before-seen trick he’s calling the “back 540 swap pretzel 270,” which earned him first place in last year’s APIK comp—and the occasional play on snowboards, slacklines, or at skateparks. He posts the videos on social media, where he’s garnered a sizable following.
Karsteter first competed in seventh grade in rail jam (performing tricks on rails, boxes, and other features), and three years later, was invited to his first X Games. He has competed professionally ever since—placing fourth in the rail run at the 2023 X Games, competing against gold-medal Olympic skier Alex Hall. While rail jam isn’t yet an Olympic event, a push spearheaded by fans and athletes means it may appear in 2030. “I will keep doing what I’m doing and hopefully if it happens, I’ll have been training for it.”
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