Is Team USA's headband-wearing curling lead an Olympic meme in the making?

Tune in to any of Team USA’s matches at Cortina Curling Olympic Stadium and the young rink’s lead will likely be the first to catch your eye.

Aidan Oldenburg throws the first stones for Team Danny Casper, is a ferocious sweeper — and rarely steps onto the ice without a red, Street Fighter-style headband.

Combined with Oldenburg’s glasses and mop of dark hair, the effect is somewhere between Clark Kent On Ice and Curling Rambo.

Team Casper, making its Olympic debut, is focused on winning. At the same time, Oldenburg knows the headband — and his colourful biography — could turn him into the next Pommel Horse Guy or Turkish Shooter Dad — athletes who, through a combination of social media relatability and athletic prowess wind up Internet famous.

So is the 24-year-old prepared if he becomes an Olympic meme?

“I don’t know that I’ve really thought about if it will catch on,” Oldenburg said of his trademark headwear a few weeks before the Milan-Cortina Games. “It’s just for fun, we all curl for fun, and I think it adds an element for the crowd to get into.

“Yesterday someone told me it was a Revenge of the Nerds type feeling they got,” he added. “I like that.”

Oldenburg curls out of Mankato, Minn., where he was introduced to the sport as a 10-year-old kid on a homeschool field trip. While he didn’t take to curling at first, soon all three of his siblings were picking up brooms.

When his childhood best friend pushed him to get back on the rink, he agreed. By the end of high school, he was a competitive curler.

In between, Oldenburg and his brother started juggling — throwing flaming torches at the Minnesota State Fair to Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start the Fire. (Oldenburg continues to juggle ahead of curling matches).

In college, he captained Minnesota State, Mankato’s Valorant e-sports team. He ended up earning a degree in ecology and works as an environmental scientist, developing permitting documents for wind, solar and battery storage projects.

Why does he wear the headband?

Oldenburg started wearing the headband at pan-continental curling play-downs in August. Mark Fenner, the lead on rival Team Korey Dropkin, had taken to wearing a headband and it made him the target of some good-natured ribbing.

After both their teams were out of contention, Casper suggested Oldenburg pick up some headbands at a sporting goods store. By the end of the next game, nearly everyone on the sheet was wearing them.

The gag remained a gag until just before the U.S. Olympic Trials in November, when Oldenburg realized the headband was actually practical.

Unlike Casper, second Ben Richardson and third Luc Violette, who abandoned the headband, Oldenburg has bangs that interfere with his bouncy style of sweeping. As the team’s busiest sweeper, Oldenburg typically burns 800 to 1,000 calories a game, making hats uncomfortably hot.

The headband also caught on with their coach’s karate-obsessed nieces and nephews.

“So I put the headband back on,” he said.

Special celebration

At trials, Team Casper pulled off an upset win by eliminating Team John Shuster, whose own improbable 2018 run ended with the U.S.’s only curling Gold.

Soon, Team Casper had their own headband salute, holding a thumb and forefinger by the temple to celebrate a successful shot. When the world Olympic qualifiers in Kelowna rolled around, family and supporters were wearing their own makeshift headbands made out of a cut-up table cloth.

USA Curling has since created an official version for its merch store.

Oldenburg continued to wear the headband at the Players’ Championship in Manitoba. While the team went 1-4 for an early exit, it showed it was a serious threat, taking Scottish gold medal favourite Team Bruce Mouat to a shootout and losing by a single stone.

A podium finish in Cortina would be a Cinderella story for the seventh-ranked team, but hardly an impossibility.

“We have a lot of confidence playing any of the teams there,” Oldenburg said.

As for whether he’s prepared if he and his headband take off with the rest of the world, Oldenburg said he’ll take it in stride. He already has been compared to fellow American Stephen Nedoroscik, whose medal-securing pommel horse routine earned him viral fame.

“A couple times, people (have been) like, ‘Oh my God he looks like Stephen Nedoroscik,’” he said. “It’s mostly just the glasses, I think.”

Team Casper takes the ice for its first game Feb. 11 against Czechia.