A two-time U.S. champion and longtime fixture in American curling, Ruohonen has finally reached the Games after more than four decades in a sport he first learned on Saturday mornings in the fifth grade, at the St. Paul Curling Club in his home state of Minnesota.
The road here was winding. Ruohonen stepped away from elite men’s curling in 2022 after his sixth failed bid to make the Olympics, retiring twice in four years and shifting his focus to senior events and his thriving law practice in Minnesota. Still, his Team USA page clarifies that since he began curling in 1981, he has taken only one curling season off—while studying law at Hamline Law School in Minnesota and recovering from a serious knee injury.
