ASPEN, Colo.\u2014Nick Goepper\u2019s road to the Olympics really began on the doorsteps of rural Indiana, where he rang doorbells, handed out flyers that shared his dream and offered to do odd jobs for neighbours for a buck or two.<\/p>\n
And on the school bus, where Goepper took the bulk boxes of candy bars he\u2019d bought and sold them to friends at a profit.<\/p>\n
\u201cEasy money. Too easy,\u201d Goepper said.<\/p>\n
Small little victories, a dollar here or there, helped him raise the money to buy a pair of goggles, eventually a pair of skis.<\/p>\n
It bought more than that. It earned him buy-in from his parents, who lived paycheque to paycheque, at best, and couldn\u2019t afford to spend money on trivial things.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey had no idea what freeskiing was,\u201d Goepper said. \u201cDidn\u2019t know anything about the X Games. I think it was more me showing to them I had the passion to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The kid who bummed rides to the 300-foot mountain near his hometown of Lawrenceburg, Ind., and got his fair share of strange looks for choosing tricky skiing over the more traditional kind\u2014or for choosing skiing at all over the Hoosier state\u2019s main sport, basketball\u2014is a favourite at the Winter X Games this week in slopestyle skiing.<\/p>\n
His quest for a second straight gold medal begins Friday.<\/p>\n
Then, next month, he\u2019ll be going for gold in Sochi, spiraling his way down the course in one of the new events at the Olympics.<\/p>\n
He\u2019ll be doing it in part because he sold his parents and his community on a dream that nobody in his hometown could really imagine might come true.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt didn\u2019t seem like it then, but now, they tell me they had their doubts,\u201d Goepper said. \u201cThey didn\u2019t have much validation about whether I was any good, or just good for the hill I was at.\u201d<\/p>\n
Goepper\u2019s validation started coming when he would hit the road and compete in small local contests in the mountains of North Carolina, West Virginia and Michigan.<\/p>\n
With his dad out of work, Goepper\u2019s plan at 15 was \u201cto mow lawns all summer and make 35 grand so I could go to a ski academy out East.\u201d<\/p>\n
Around then, he was introduced to one of the godfathers of the sport\u2014the mysterious, but amazingly effective Kerry Miller\u2014who steered Goepper toward the Windells Academy in Oregon.<\/p>\n
There, Goepper connected with Peter Hanley, a former elite freestyle skier, who saw Goepper\u2019s broad, lanky build and said the first thing he asked him was \u201cwhy are you wearing shoulder pads?\u201d<\/p>\n
Goepper did not grow up in a ski factory and came to Windells self-taught and a bit bullheaded.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t like him for a year,\u201d Goepper said about Hanley, who remains his coach and one of his closest friends.<\/p>\n
While working on an especially difficult trick, Hanley gave him some pointers that started to sink in.<\/p>\n
\u201cI finally did it right,\u201d Goepper said. \u201cI thought, \u2018This guy may know what he\u2019s talking about.\u2019 That helped.\u201d<\/p>\n
Goepper started winning bigger contests and getting more attention.<\/p>\n
\u201cI use him as an example for a lot of the guys I work with,\u201d Hanley said. \u201cEveryone thinks everything comes easy for Nick now and he just dominates, flying around. But I remind them, his first time at the X Games, he actually didn\u2019t get second like everyone thinks. He got 13th. It\u2019s a process. And Nick has taken a lot of hits in the process to get to where he\u2019s gotten.\u201d<\/p>\n
There may be better-known names\u2014Bobby Brown, for one\u2014in a sport making its Olympic debut. Hard to argue anyone\u2019s skiing better at this point, though. Goepper secured his spot at the Olympics with a win and a second-place finish in the first two qualifying events.<\/p>\n
Since then, endorsement deals have been coming in and Goepper is doing some things stars do\u2014he was on the red carpet at the Golden Globes this month\u2014though not forgetting his roots.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wasn\u2019t known,\u201d Goepper said. \u201cBut I guess I was convincing enough to people that they had a little bit of faith in me. I\u2019m thankful for that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Notes: Switzerland\u2019s Iouri Podladtchikov, better known as the \u201ciPod,\u201d had the best score in halfpipe qualifying with an 88, meaning he\u2019ll go last in the final Sunday night. He was followed by Ben Ferguson (80) and Danny Davis (77). Podladtchikov is considered one of the top threats at the Olympics to Shaun White, who is not competing this week. IPod has a double-cork 1440 in his arsenal, which he did not use Thursday. … Lindsey Jacobellis had the second-best qualifying time in snowboardcross, behind only Canada\u2019s Dominique Maltais, who won bronze at the Turin Games in 2006. … Two-time Olympic gold medallist Seth Wescott, still on the bubble for a spot on the Olympic team, qualified 17th. Also making it through: 45-year-old Shaun Palmer, the man widely credited with creating snowboardcross.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" ASPEN, Colo.\u2014Nick Goepper\u2019s road to the Olympics really began on the doorsteps of rural Indiana, where he rang doorbells, handed …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-sports","mauthors-eddie-pells","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/897\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}