Korey Dropkin started curling before he started school.
His parents, Keith and Shelley, were competitive international curlers and older brother Stephen competed in the world junior championship. As a child, Korey spent almost as much time at the Broomstones Curling Club in tiny Wayland, Mass., as he did at home.
But if his family pointed the way to the Olympics, Korey will take the final steps on his own Thursday when he and teammate Cory Thiesse take the ice at the Cortina Curling Stadium for the opening round of the mixed doubles competition in the Milan-Cortina Winter Games.
“It feels amazing. It’s really hard to put into words,” he said. “It is something that I’ve worked for my entire life. And I’m finally given that opportunity to live my dream.
“I’m just so honored and grateful to now be able to be called an Olympian.”
That’s a title he says he’s been chasing since he was 6 and first became aware curling was even in the Olympics while watching the 2002 Games on TV. Dropkin’s event, mixed doubles, wasn’t on the Olympic calendar then, joining in 2018. Those games, in Pyeongchang, South Korea, also marked the only time the U.S. has climbed to the top of the podium in Olympic curling.
That gold came in the men’s competition, with a team led by John Shuster upsetting Canada in the semifinals, then besting Sweden in the final. But Shuster, a five-time Olympian, won’t be competing in Cortina after his quintet was edged by a mostly young fivesome skipped by Danny Casper in the Olympic trials. Team Casper then beat a China in the Olympic Qualification Event to reach Cortina.
The men’s round-robin competition in Italy begins Feb. 11.
Casper and lead Aidan Oldenburg, both 24, are the youngest members on the U.S. curling roster. And together they still aren’t as old as Team Casper’s alternate, Rich Ruohonen, a two-time national champion who, at 54, would become the oldest American to compete in the Winter Games if he makes the ice in Cortina.
Ruohonen competed in his first U.S. championships in 1998, before any of his Cortina teammates were even born. He had all but given up on the Olympics before this year.
“I’ve been so close,” Ruohonen said in an interview with Reuters. “I finished second a few times to go to the Olympics, and third and fourth. Sometimes we were the No. 1 seed and we blew it.”
Four years ago, he lost a spot in mixed doubles for the Beijing Olympics on the last shot at trials.
“I figured someday I’d go as a coach,” he said.
Instead, he’s going as the team dad.
But if the men’s team — which the exception of Ruohonen — is young, the U.S. women have brought a lot of experience with them to Cortina. Skip Tabitha Peterson, 36, has competed in eight world championships and two previous Winter Olympics, though she has never won a major international competition.
Three-time Olympian Tara Peterson, 34, has been to six world championships; Thiesse, 31, who will compete in the women’s team event as well as mixed doubles, has participated in five world championships and the 2018 Olympics; while Taylor Anderson-Heide, the youngest member of Team Peterson at 30, is a three-time U.S. champion who has been to three world championships.
Alternate Aileen Geving, 38, is also a three-time Olympian.
The U.S. has never medaled in women’s curling at the Winter Games, finishing fourth in 2002 and 2006. The women’s competition in Cortina begins Feb. 12.
If the path the U.S. curlers have taken to Italy has varied, from the well-worn road the three-time Olympians on the women’s side have traveled to the long wait Ruohonen has endured, they’ve all seen their hard work pay off. And Dropkin said if he could go back and talk to himself at 6, imaging an Olympic future, the message he’d deliver would be to never stop dreaming.
“Believe in yourself. Never stop. Never quit,” he said. “Just keep going because you’re going to do it.”
“It’s very unique,” he continued, “to be able to compete for so long, from so young an age to so old of age.”
The U.S. team in Cortina is proof of that.
The post U.S. curling team’s decades-long journey culminates at Milan-Cortina Olympics appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
