Athlete Profile

Zeb Powell: Taming Gravity

By Colin Bane

X Games Aspen 2020 Knuckle Huck gold medalist Zeb Powell

...views his approach to snowboarding as an improvisational creative process. He says he’s inspired by the ways other artists he loves -- Freddie Gibbs, Cleo Soul, Tyler the Creator -- play around with manipulating sounds, beats or words.

His own artistic medium? “It’s really just about feeling out different ways to manipulate gravity,” Zeb says.

And he sure did that enroute to his silver medal at X Games Aspen 2024. But while Knuckle Huck’s terminology may sound like a foreign language to the uninitiated, Zeb believes the pictures resonate with people. Viewership numbers and social engagement back him up.

“People love Knuckle Huck because, on the one hand, it feels attainable -- anyone can ride a knuckle! -- and at the same time it’s completely unattainable,” Zeb says of X Games’ most undisciplined discipline’s appeal. “These tricks are like unicorns, even for me. They don’t even seem real.”

Zeb is equally excited for the debut of Street Style as a full medal discipline at X Games Aspen 2025. In November, he released raw footage from filming for his part in the 2024 Burton Snowboards team video Blooom, a powerful showcase of what street riding is all about.

“Rail jams and street riding should be the biggest thing in snowboarding,” the North Carolina native says. “It’s so much more accessible for everyone. For this to get more shine at X Games will give more opportunities to the whole snowboard community. I want to see everyone grow!”

The People’s Champ

Image ©Mark Kohlman/X Games

Five years have passed since Powell surprised with Knuckle Huck gold in his X Games debut. Since then, Zeb has gone from a complete unknown to a forever fan favorite. Really: As an X Games rookie, he had 30,000 Instagram followers. Now? A million between the ‘Gram and TikTok.

“I just love getting caught up in the energy of the crowd -- shoutout to the fans! -- and, honestly, my favorite thing about X Games is riding the Buttermilk park with a bunch of fans cruising with me,” Zeb says. “Even though it’s the biggest event of the year, I love that I can also turn the contest stress of the event off in my mind and just go snowboarding.”

Shifting The Culture

Images ©Trevor Brown, Jr.,/X Games

Zeb says his big picture goal is to break down the many different barriers that can make winter sports feel unwelcoming to people of color, to women and to people without easy access to big ski resort towns. Through his platform at X Games and initiatives like his annual Slide-In Tour of small ski hills and the Culture Shifters event he co-founded in 2020 with X Games host Selema Masekela, he is doing exactly that.

“I just want to keep growing, keep building, keeping bringing people together, in and out of snowboarding,” Zeb says.

Culture Shifters will celebrate its 5th anniversary in Aspen in March, and Zeb says he’s been astounded both by how much the event has grown and by how much more frequently he now sees other Black snowboarders on the slopes.

“It really started with inviting a bunch of friends to ride together, which led to this a-ha moment of realizing this is not normal to see Black snowboarders out here together getting after it like this, but it totally should be,” Zeb says. “After that first Culture Shifters event, I was just smiling for two weeks straight. And the more we’ve built it, the more exciting it’s all become.”

The effect, he says, is contagious: “That’s snowboarding! You know. It isn’t a hard sell!” Even so, the impact has been greater, and farther-reaching, than he ever imagined.

“It’s hard to explain, but you can just see it in everyone’s soul and vibe when we get everyone in one place like that,” he says. “We want to keep getting that point across, telling that story, and showing people: Snowboarding is fun, and this is for you!”

Finding New Fans

Zeb says he didn’t have any real context for the scope or audience of the Warren Miller Entertainment ski film franchise when Masekela invited him and rising teen star LJ Henriquez to film with him in Japan for the 75th anniversary installment of the annual film anthology. It didn’t hit him until he started getting tons of new followers reaching out to him on social media after every stop of the film tour.

“Japan was a trip because I was with my mentor, Selema, and also my mentee, LJ,” Zeb says. “And because we were all experiencing something new together, it was more like we were mentoring each other and just vibing off each other’s energy.”

X Games Aspen 2025 will be LJ’s rookie appearance, at age 16, after qualifying through the Street Style Pro event at Copper Mountain in December. The two riders first met when Zeb was still in high school and LJ was around 5 years old.

“I remember being at a rail jam one day and randomly seeing this little kid just ripping, and I’m like, ‘What the hell?!’ Every time I saw him after that, I would kind of try to encourage and mentor him. But you don't really gotta say too much to a kid that’s doing it like that!”

Fans at Copper Mountain got an early dose of LJ’s all-the-way-up energy and his ¡Yo tu sabe! (“You already know!”)mantra. If fans in Aspen don’t already know, they’re about to find out.

“There might have been other East Coast snowboarders at X Games over the years, but none who rep it quite like LJ,” Zeb says. “He’s still so New Jersey! You can’t get that out of him.”

Today, X Games; Tomorrow, The World

Zeb obviously would love to upgrade last year’s Knuckle Huck silver to gold at X Games Aspen 2025 -- a lot of very vocal fans thought he should’ve won in 2024 -- and is also aiming for the Street Style podium. But he isn’t sweating either very much.

“I don’t really like to put that kind of pressure on myself,” Zeb says. “That kind of ruins my flow, so I never really think too hard about it. I don’t even really have visions for what tricks I want to try at X Games because I know as soon as I get there, some whole new idea will occur to me.”

Zeb Powell improvising again. Gravity beware.

Zeb Powell Bio Blast

DOB: January 18, 2000. Age: 25
X Games Aspen 2020 Knuckle Huck gold medalist as a rookie; silver medalist at XG Aspen 2024 behind Liam Brearley.
In both Knuckle Huck and Street Style at X Games Aspen 2025. His last-minute training regimen is a little unorthodox: He’s spending the week before X Games focusing on Zeb & Caccs Pop Out, a mini-tour of North Carolina ski areas including Beech Mountain, his home ski area Cataloochee, and Appalachian Ski Mountain.
Instagram & TikTok: @zebpowelll