{"id":21054,"date":"2026-02-12T05:12:32","date_gmt":"2026-02-12T05:12:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/?p=21054"},"modified":"2026-02-12T05:12:32","modified_gmt":"2026-02-12T05:12:32","slug":"who-is-rich-ruohonen-personal-injury-attorney-may-become-oldest-olympian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/?p=21054","title":{"rendered":"Who is Rich Ruohonen? Personal injury attorney may become oldest Olympian"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Officially, Rich Ruohonen is listed as the alternate on the U.S. men\u2019s Olympic curling team in Milan-Cortina. Unofficially, he might be the most indispensable 54-year-old personal injury attorney in the Olympic Village. He\u2019d also be the oldest American to ever compete at the Winter Olympics.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cI\u2019m not the dad, and I\u2019m not the coach,\u201d his homemade T-shirt communicates to other athletes, the Wall Street Journal<\/em> reported. He\u2019s there to compete. The way Team USA\u2019s youngest Olympians tell it, that \u201cguy\u201d is the one cooking omelets before pressure games, grilling steaks after big wins, and quietly picking up a chunk of the tab to keep their improbable run on track.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The road here was winding. Ruohonen stepped away from elite men\u2019s 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\u2014while studying law at Hamline Law School in Minnesota and recovering from a serious knee injury.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On paper, Ruohonen\u2019s role is limited: As an alternate, he may never actually throw a stone on Olympic ice. In reality, the Journal<\/em> reports, he does have a dad-like presence on the team. He drives the rented minivan, handles early morning grocery runs so his teammates can sleep, flips eggs to order on game days, and uses a successful lawyer\u2019s income to help cover travel and lodging that Olympic stipends don\u2019t fully reach. (There is the matter of a $200,000 gift, given to every Olympian by billionaire Ross Stevens, vesting either at age 45 or 20 years after their appearance, implying Ruohonen will collect his in his mid-seventies.)<\/p>\n

A partner at TSR Injury Law, Ruohonen has built a reputation as a relentless plaintiff\u2019s attorney, securing multimillion?dollar verdicts and settlements and earning multiple \u201cAttorney of the Year\u201d honors in his state. <\/p>\n

Colleagues describe a litigator who rarely loses at trial and approaches each case with the same meticulous preparation he brings to reading the ice. Ruohonen began curling more than a decade before some of his teammates were born, and has medals from back?to?back senior world championships\u2014yet he still shows up for 6 a.m. workouts and accepts his main job might be to stand on the sidelines with a stopwatch and a joke.<\/p>\n

Before he departed for Italy, the Journal<\/em> reported, Ruohonen set up an automatic email reply to clients and lawyers alike.\u00a0\u201cI am out of the office,\u201d he wrote, \u201cplaying in the Olympics.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

#Rich #Ruohonen #Personal #injury #attorney #oldest #Olympian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Officially, Rich Ruohonen is l… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21055,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[10074,11548,2975,6684,10871,10706,1623,39,12758,3412],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21054"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21054\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}