‘I’m not the dad, and I’m not the coach’: Meet the 54-year-old personal injury attorney stealing America’s hearts at the Olympics

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

“I’m not the dad, and I’m not the coach,” his homemade T-shirt communicates to other athletes, the Wall Street Journal reported. He’s there to compete. The way Team USA’s youngest Olympians tell it, that “guy” 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.

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. 

On paper, Ruohonen’s role is limited: As an alternate, he may never actually throw a stone on Olympic ice. In reality, the Journal 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’s income to help cover travel and lodging that Olympic stipends don’t 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.)

A partner at TSR Injury Law, Ruohonen has built a reputation as a relentless plaintiff’s attorney, securing multimillion‑dollar verdicts and settlements and earning multiple “Attorney of the Year” honors in his state.

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—yet 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.

Before he departed for Italy, the Journal reported, Ruohonen set up an automatic email reply to clients and lawyers alike. “I am out of the office,” he wrote, “playing in the Olympics.” 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com