For twenty years, John Shuster of Superior, Wisconsin and Duluth, Minnesota has been the face of U.S. curling. He represented the U.S. in the past five Winter Olympics, and his team won the first and only American gold medal in curling, at the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Games.
Shuster carried the American flag in the Opening Ceremony of the 2022 Beijing Olympics. He was aiming for his sixth Winter Games. But the 43-year old Midwestern dad and his team of seasoned curlers got beat at the U.S. Olympic Team Trials for Curling in November, by 24-year-old Danny Casper and his (mostly) Gen-Z team.
Casper and his primary teammates Ben Richardson, Aidan Oldenburg, and Luc Violette, all in their mid-twenties and Olympic first-timers, mark a new era in U.S. curling. "We understand how much it means, for us but also for the country," Casper says, "We want to do our best to represent everyone well, so we're definitely going to give it our all."
Trials were tough
The competition at the Team Trials was fierce. It came down to the very last match. U.S. curling fans told NPR it was the best competition they'd seen in years.
It was also civilized, with Team Shuster graciously conceding the loss. "Whatever you do, give it whatever you have – and some days it's not enough, and that's okay," Shuster said in a TV interview immediately after losing the final match, "Everyone needs to get behind those guys," he added, urging the stadium packed with mostly Shuster fans to support Team Casper in their Olympic run.
Curling is a game of tradition, first played centuries ago on Scottish lochs, where players slide heavy granite rocks down a sheet of ice towards a target.
Its code of ethics includes the "Spirit of Curling": You don't distract your opponents, you call your own fouls, and you respect each other and the game.
"I want to respect the sport, and it's a great sport," Casper says, "At the same time, it's a small one and if we want it to grow, we gotta do something about it."
Casper and his teammates try to up the entertainment in their performances. His teammates Ben Richardson and Aidan Oldenburg are known to juggle before games. "We want to win, but we're here doing it because it's fun," Casper says, "If you show up at the arena and you've never watched curling before, why would you care that we just made a 'come around'? But if we start yelling at the crowd and pumping them up, dancing - that's something, and then maybe they'll go try it themselves," Casper says.
A real team sport
Mens' and womens' curling are team sports — three players take turns throwing rocks towards a target, and using brooms to sweep their paths down the ice. A fourth player, the skip or team captain, calls the shots and throws the final rocks.
The team whose rock is closest to the center of the target, or house, scores. They get a point for that rock, along with additional points for every other rock that's closer to the center than their opponent's nearest rock.
At these elite levels, members have played on many other teams. Some have led their own top teams before joining this one. "I don't think about it as Team Casper," Danny Casper says, "I feel a little bit weird because it's my name and it feels a little selfish or something."
It's been a special team effort for Casper, who developed Guillane-Barre syndrome about two years ago. It's a rare autoimmune condition that causes nerve damage, affecting Casper's hands and legs, and it kept him out of the game for several months. With medication and physical therapy, he's back to curling full-time, though he still suffers some of the effects.
Dream come true for oldest U.S. Olympian
To help shore up the team, veteran curler Rich Ruohonen joined as a fifth man – an experienced player and coach who can substitute in as needed.
Ruohonen, 54 years old, is the oldest U.S. athlete at the Olympics. "It's been a long road. I've been so close so many times to the Olympics – it was really emotional for me because I thought it was over," he says. "I figured I'd get there someday as a coach maybe, but to get there, even as an alternate, is just my dream."
If he throws a rock, he'll go into history as the oldest U.S. athlete to compete in the Winter Olympics, besting figure skater Joseph Savage, who competed as a 52-year-old figure skater in the 1932 Lake Placid Games, according to Olympic historian Bill Mallon.
Ruohonen's been competing at the top levels of curling for more than thirty years – longer than his Gen-Z team members have been alive. One of the changes, he says, is that sweeping has become more aggressive. "We didn't used to practice it. We weren't in the gym all the time," he says, "We used to throw a million rocks. Now we throw less rocks and we work out more."
When he's not curling, Ruohonen is a partner at a personal injury law firm. He doesn't sleep much, he says. Most curlers hold jobs outside the sport. The women's team includes a pharmacist, a dentist, and a lab technician. Casper's team has a civil engineer and an environmental scientist.
Casper was asked what he'd do after his big victory at the Olympic Trials. "I was going to drive home and go to work tomorrow," he said. He did, in fact, show up for his job at an Alfa Romeo car dealership the next day.
The men's Olympics curling competition starts February 11, and finishes with the medal events on February 20-21. If they win at the curling stadium in Cortina, Team Casper may celebrate in a bigger way.
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