SIOUX FALLS, South Dakota -- Rich Ruohonen is two steps away from becoming the oldest American to compete in a Winter Olympics in any medal event after being part of the winning men's curling team at trials.
Ruohonen, a 54-year-old personal injury lawyer from Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, is the alternate -- or fifth player -- for a team skipped by Danny Casper (who is the same age as Ruohonen's daughter, Hannah).
The team hasn't qualified for the Milan Cortina Games quite yet. It must finish in the top two of a last-chance, global qualification tournament in Kelowna, British Columbia, in December. Team Casper currently has the highest world ranking of the teams in the qualifier field, which doesn't include curling powers like Canada and Sweden, which already earned Olympic spots.
If Team Casper gets through that tournament, then Ruohonen would be in line to go to his first Olympics after playing in 20 years' worth of Olympic Trials, though he wouldn't be guaranteed of getting into a game. In Olympic curling, teams are allowed to sub in alternates before a game for strategic reasons. U.S. men's teams skipped by John Shuster used their alternate at three of the last four Olympics, though in that same span the U.S. women's team alternate was never used.
"I figured I'd get there (to the Olympics) someday as a coach, maybe," Ruohonen said after watching his younger teammates dethrone the 2018 gold medalist Shuster at trials on Sunday night. "But to get there, even if it is as an alternate, is just my dream."
Ruohonen remembers his dad toting him at age 12 to the St. Paul Curling Club on Saturday mornings in the early 1980s. He started curling competitively on the junior level in his late teens, around 1990.
After taking a few years off for law school, he got serious about the sport again. Ruohonen was on teams that won national titles in 2008 and 2018. At Olympic Trials, his teams finished fifth for 2006, fourth for 2010, fourth for 2014, runner-up for 2018 and third for 2022 -- all tournaments won by Shuster's teams. Ruohonen and Jamie Sinclair also lost in the final of the mixed doubles trials for the 2022 Beijing Games.
Ruohonen briefly stepped away from elite curling after the 2022 Olympic cycle, then played the 2023-24 season on a team with retired NFL Hall of Famer Jared Allen. Last year, Team Casper was looking for a sub while Casper was sidelined due to Guillain-Barré Syndrome. Ruohonen was one of multiple players to fill in and stayed with the team even as Casper returned.
"I was probably the most sought-after free agent at that point because I had so much experience," he said. "I came in, started playing for them, and we were winning a lot, whether Danny was in or I was in."
Ruohonen even led the team to a title at October's Henderson Metal Fall Classic in Ontario, two weeks before Olympic Trials. Casper was busy that week serving as an alternate for Shuster's team at an event to earn the U.S. a spot at the 2026 World Championship.
Casper was back for trials, so Ruohonen returned to the alternate role in Sioux Falls. He still assisted the team with strategy, plus psychology. He gave the team a pep talk before Sunday's decisive game in the championship series against Shuster.
"I told them today, 'If we could have one game against John Shuster at the beginning of this week, if you just said we're going to play one game to win it all, you would have taken it in a heartbeat, and that's why we're here,'" Ruohonen said. "'So that's what we're going to do today. We're going to take it.'"
The team of 20-somethings proved the 54-year-old prophetic, defeating Shuster 7-5.
"It was really emotional for me because I thought it was over," Ruohonen said. "I thought I had retired, basically, and even though I’m not playing full-time or anything like that, I feel like I’m part of the team. Any way I can help, I’ve helped. Just to make it this time, I told my wife, it’s all worth it."
Ruohonen had already decided these would be his last Olympic Trials as a player, win or lose.
"It's really crucial for us, just him being present," Casper said. "We wouldn't be here without him, for sure."
The oldest American to compete in a medal event at a Winter Olympics was Joseph Savage, a 52-year-old pairs' figure skater at the 1932 Lake Placid Games, according to a group of Olympic historians known as the OlyMADMen.
Ruohonen turns 55 on March 31. Scott Baird, the U.S. men's curling team alternate in 2006, was a younger 54 at the Torino Games, though he did not see game action.
Bud Somerville, the pioneer of modern American curling, led men's teams at the Olympics in 1988 (at age 51) and 1992 (at age 55) when curling was a demonstration sport. It wasn't on the official Olympic medal program those years, but was auditioning for a spot (which it did get starting in 1998, returning to the program for the first time since the first Winter Games in 1924).
So Ruohonen is on the verge of history, should Team Casper get through next month's qualification tournament.
"It's been 30 years of hard work to get to here, and it would sure be sad if we didn't make it," he said. "So we're gonna make it."