The 30-year-old American, who on Monday won the men's giant slalom event at Coronet Peak, spent a semester studying at the University of Otago in 2003.
He enjoyed his time living and playing as a scarfie, studying political science and relaxing at the Captain Cook Tavern, but his six-month stint was not just spent in Dunedin.
"I was down there with this one other buddy from Williams [College, in Massachusetts] Chris Frank, and the two of us bought a cheap little car and went to all of these races.
"We did a lot more skiing then than school.
"It was super fun."
The college trip came as he was deciding whether to continue skiing competitively.
"I made actually the biggest gains in my life, skiing here that year," he said on Monday, after the race.
"I went from 600th or 800th in the world, to almost top 100 in the world.
"Thirty days down here and in the next season I totally killed it and won a bunch of carnivals and college races."
Nickerson puts his sudden success down to no one particular fact; rather "that everything just clicked, the equipment clicked, I had some really good training and some really fun people to be around".
Now living on the east coast of New Hampshire, Nickerson plans to stay in New Zealand until September 9.
He will race in Saturday's Winter Games super G event at Mt Hutt and at the New Zealand nationals before heading back to the northern hemisphere season.
He is enjoying being back.
"I always love coming to New Zealand, and this place is always fun to ski," he said. "So I'm totally psyched to be back."
