A mysterious illness had deprived the 22-year-old of the ability to perform even the most basic tasks. Almost overnight, he went from captaining one of the top-ranked curling teams in the United States to having difficulty getting out of bed or down the stairs without assistance.
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At first, Casper shrugged it off when his neck and back hurt near the end of a mixed doubles tournament in February 2024. He attributed the pain to his clumsy sweeping technique to try to influence the trajectory of the curling stone. As captain and chief tactician of his men’s team, Casper typically left the sweeping duties to his teammates. In mixed doubles, that was not an option.
Discomfort became the only thing Casper could think about shortly after returning to his home in suburban Minneapolis. A sharp pain ran through his arms and legs. His hands and feet tingled incessantly, as if he had slept on them in a fun way. He depended on his roommates to eat and do laundry. He barely had enough feeling in his fingers to crudely type text messages on his phone.
When Casper first underwent a series of diagnostic tests, medical experts were as perplexed as he was. A doctor suggested to Casper that he might be deficient in vitamin B. Casper gave him a withering look and then told his friends, “I’m not a doctor and I’m sure vitamin B is important, but I think this is worse than that.”
As the weeks passed without a diagnosis or viable treatment plan, Casper’s mental state darkened. He was no longer worried about recovering in time for the next curling season. In his most desperate moments, as he stared at the ceiling above his bed, his thoughts drifted to “the worst possible things.”
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“I was trying to watch shows and stuff to pass the time, but it was pretty terrible,” Casper told Yahoo Sports. “For a while, it was like, forget about curling. How about we get to tomorrow?”
Well, tomorrow came and Casper landed in Cortina, Italy, where on Wednesday he led Team USA to victory over Czechia in their opening match of these Olympic Games.
Although Casper is not at 100 percent, its goal remains the same: gold.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
Curling or soccer?
For Casper, precisely, saying the words “forget about curling” is a window into how much he was suffering. This was a kid from the New York suburbs who moved across the country at age 18 to pursue his dream of curling in the Olympics.
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Casper first became familiar with the sport by attending his parents’ curling matches at the Ardsley Curling Club along the east bank of the Hudson River. When Casper turned 11, his father signed him up to start curling at the club.
In an unlikely but fortuitous coincidence, Casper grew up in the same small New York town as an older teenager whose father was a former national curling champion. Andrew Stopera had a decorated junior career, leading his team to three consecutive junior national championships between 2017 and 2019. Throwing rocks with Stopera and trying in vain to stay competitive fueled Casper in those early days.
When Casper was finishing his sophomore year in high school, the multi-sport athlete realized he needed to choose a path. Did you want to pursue football in the hopes of getting a scholarship offer from a top-tier university? Or did he want to focus on curling and see how far he could go if he made it his priority?
Watching John Shuster’s American quartet win Olympic gold in 2018 helped turn Casper toward curling. So did some timely praise from Stopera’s father, who told Casper that he was “pretty good at this” and could one day compete at the national and international level.
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“What did I know then?” Casper said. “I thought, ‘Oh, that sounds fun.’ Soccer was my main focus at the time, but I thought, okay, maybe play soccer in college and then what? Curling was pretty interesting and unique and, in theory, something I could do a little bit more of. That’s what attracted me.”
Instead of staying in the New York area after high school, Casper moved to the Minneapolis curling hub in 2019 and continued his studies at the University of Minnesota. It was there that he joined former world junior silver medalists Luc Violette and Ben Richardson, as well as his promising teammate Chase Sinnett.
That quartet took silver at the 2023 World University Games and finished second to the powerful Shuster team at the 2023 National Championship. Team Casper’s winning ways looked poised to continue even after Sinnett left after the 2023-24 season and Aidan Oldenburg replaced him.
Then Casper got sick without warning.
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The body that had served him for 22 years began to malfunction and no one could understand why.
American rapper Snoop Dogg (left) with American Danny Casper at the Olympic Curling Stadium in Cortina, Italy. (Andrew Milligan/PA Images via Getty Images)
(Andrew Milligan – PA Images via Getty Images)
Find an answer
In June 2024, four months after Casper began experiencing unexplained symptoms, the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee flew him to Florida for additional testing. Only then did Casper finally receive the explanation he had been looking for.
Doctors diagnosed Casper with Guillain-Barré syndrome, a rare disease in which the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks its nerves. There is no cure for GBS, doctors told Casper, but with treatment and physical therapy, you could expect to make a full recovery in as little as eight months to a year.
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“Once they told me this should be something that should go away, something we can try different medications with, it was a huge relief,” Casper said. “That made me more optimistic about everything related to curling and life.”
While Casper desperately wanted to reunite with his team for the start of the 2024-25 curling season, he still didn’t feel like sliding a 44-pound granite boulder across a narrow sheet of ice. He was out for the first two months of the season and played only when his health allowed thereafter, forcing his teammates to go through a series of short-term replacement captains.
Casper has returned to leading his team this season, grateful to have the opportunity to compete again against the best teams in the world and eager to prove that he and his teammates belong. They validated their status as the top-ranked U.S. men’s team entering the Olympic Trials by reaching the finals and dethroning Shuster’s experienced and decorated team in a tense best-of-three showdown.
There was still one more obstacle for Team Casper to represent the USA at the Milan Cortina Games, but Casper and his teammates overcame it with ease. They clinched one of the two remaining Olympic spots with a dominant performance in a last-chance world qualification tournament in early December.
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The fairytale story would be of a healthy Casper triumphantly sailing across the US to a gold medal, but in reality, his road to recovery hasn’t been as easy or as quick as doctors hoped. Even now, two years after his first symptoms, there are still telltale signs that he still doesn’t have the same strength or dexterity in his hands as before.
On bad days, he could show up on the ice with his shoelaces untied because he couldn’t tie a tight knot. Or you could ask your teammates for help opening a water bottle or turning over your rock to clean it.
“For him to be able to go out and play like he’s playing with this condition, it’s incredible,” said Rich Ruohonen, who frequently filled in for Casper last season and now serves as the team’s reserve. “He’s healthier now than before, but he still has a lot of problems, a lot of pain. Most people would probably give up. He doesn’t let anything get to him.”
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Casper’s condition did not allow him to pitch as often as he would have liked before the Olympics. He compares himself to NFL veterans who practice on a limited basis a couple of times a week to save their legs or bodies for game day.
And yet, even at less than 100%, Casper’s goals for these Olympics are no different than any other tournament he has participated in. The man who was confined to bed less than two years ago hopes to be at the top of the medal podium in Italy.
“I always have a hard time understanding people who say their goal is to make the playoffs or get bronze,” Casper said. “No, the goal is always to win. I don’t know why it would be anything else.”