Rich Ruohonen does a lot for Team USA curling.
He wakes up early to grocery shop so his teammates can sleep in. He whips up omelets before big matches and grills steaks after major wins. He drives the rental minivan. He’s even been known to chip in for flights and hotel rooms.
Oh — and he might become the oldest American athlete in Winter Olympics history.
At 54, the Minnesota personal-injury attorney is the most unlikely figure at the Milan Cortina Games. To clear up confusion, he wears a homemade T-shirt that reads: “I’m not the dad, and I’m not the coach.” But he is something arguably more improbable — an American curling legend finally standing on the Olympic stage.
Ruohonen first competed in a national championship in 1998. He won it a decade later and has been a fixture in U.S. curling ever since — long before any of his current teammates were born. What eluded him, heartbreakingly, was the Olympics.
He came agonizingly close multiple times. The closest was before the 2022 Games, when U.S. mixed doubles trials came down to a final shot. At 50, he walked away believing the dream was over.
“I honestly thought it was over four years ago,” he said. “Well, I probably thought it was over eight years before that.”
Then came an unexpected twist. Danny Casper, captain of one of America’s rising teams, was sidelined by a rare autoimmune disease and needed a substitute. Ruohonen — decades older than the rest of the roster — stepped in.
On paper, it made little sense. His teammates are in their mid-20s, roughly the same age as his children. He’s older than the team’s coach. But on the ice, he fit seamlessly. When Casper recovered, Ruohonen stayed on as the alternate.
That team qualified for the Olympics.
Now, Ruohonen is one played stone away from rewriting history. To officially become an Olympian — and surpass the age mark set by 52-year-old figure skater Joseph Savage in 1932 — he must appear in a match. As the alternate, that requires opportunity.
The irony is delicious: a slip-and-fall attorney who needs someone to slip and fall.
“The irony,” teammate Aidan Oldenburg said, “is not lost on us.”
Curling has defined Ruohonen’s life since he first picked up a broom in Minnesota in the early 1980s — back when, he jokes, curlers still smoked indoors. For years, he balanced 80-hour workweeks at his law firm, TSR Injury Law, so he could dedicate winters to the sport. Before leaving for Italy, he set up an automatic email reply that read: “I am out of the office playing in the Olympics.”
His teammates roast him relentlessly — especially after he won the senior national championship. They send him old Olympic photos asking if he’s in them. He shrugs it off.
“I slide bad all the time,” he jokes. “I’m almost 100 years old.”
But inside the rink, he’s indispensable — scouting opponents, offering strategy, staying ready. His teammates insist he’ll see action.
Until then, the team’s “dad” waits, broom in hand, one stone away from a miracle decades in the making.
