{"id":135840,"date":"2026-02-17T04:17:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-17T04:17:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/135840\/"},"modified":"2026-02-17T04:17:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T04:17:08","slug":"brooklyn-park-curler-sets-record-as-oldest-us-winter-olympian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/135840\/","title":{"rendered":"Brooklyn Park curler sets record as oldest US Winter Olympian"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Attorney Attorney with TSR chases Olympics medal<\/a> <\/p>\n

A curler from Brooklyn Park is going for the gold at the Olympics in Milan, and his name is one most Minnesotans will already know. FOX 9\u2019s Maury Glover explains.<\/p>\n

(FOX 9) – Rich Ruohonen’s Olympic journey<\/a> is a testament to dreams realized and records broken.<\/p>\n

‘That moment was unbelievable’\u00a0 <\/p>\n

What we know:<\/p>\n

Ruohonen, at 54, made his Olympic debut as an alternate for the U.S. men’s curling team during their match against Switzerland last week.<\/p>\n

His participation set a record as the oldest U.S. athlete to compete in the Winter Games.<\/p>\n

“It’s been the story of the games. Everybody in the athlete village is like, congrats. I have this shirt that says, \u2018I’m not the dad and I’m not the coach,\u2019” said Ruohonen.<\/p>\n

Ruohonen’s experience and wisdom have been invaluable to his Gen Z teammates, who are around the same age as his children.<\/p>\n

“In fact, I played in my first national championship before any of them were born,” he said.<\/p>\n

‘I couldn’t be any happier’ <\/p>\n

The backstory:<\/p>\n

Ruohonen has been curling since he was 12 years old.<\/p>\n

He has competed in several Olympic trials since the late 80’s, but always came up short until recently.<\/p>\n

He says the U.S. men’s curling team asked him to be an alternate because skip Danny Casper has Guillain-Barre syndrome.<\/p>\n

When he’s not curling, Ruohonen is an attorney with TSR Personal Injury Law, who has been named Minnesota Attorney Of The Year six times.<\/p>\n

“I do get a lot of business from curlers around the country, frankly. I’ve handled cases in other states too, but my name’s out there pretty big in the curling world, as you might imagine, and maybe 10 times as much now,” he said.<\/p>\n

The path ahead for Team USA <\/p>\n

What they’re saying:<\/p>\n

Ruohonen says Team USA needs to win two of its next three games to advance to the medal round.<\/p>\n

Regardless of the outcome, Ruohonen cherishes his Olympic moment.<\/p>\n

“Right now, we’re focused on let’s go win a medal. Let’s hope that that happens and love to come back to Minnesota and with a medal and see what happens from there,” he said.<\/p>\n

Ruohonen’s Olympic journey doesn’t end here.<\/p>\n

After the Winter Games, he will head to the Senior World Curling Championships in Geneva at the end of April, following his recent victory at the Senior National Curling Championships.<\/p>\n

Olympics<\/a>Brooklyn Park<\/a>People<\/a>Sports<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Attorney with TSR chases Olympics medal A curler from Brooklyn Park is going for the gold at the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":135841,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,5796,9230,9229,9,24,12,63,15559,1232,319,618],"class_list":{"0":"post-135840","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brooklyn","8":"tag-brooklyn","9":"tag-brooklyn-headlines","10":"tag-brooklyn-news","11":"tag-brooklyn-park","12":"tag-hennepin-county","13":"tag-mn","14":"tag-new-york","15":"tag-new-york-city","16":"tag-news","17":"tag-nyc","18":"tag-olympics","19":"tag-people","20":"tag-sports","21":"tag-us"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135840"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135840\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}