Declan Farmer's Rise to Sled Hockey Stardom is No Coincidence

As the Paralympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026 approach, Declan Farmer finds himself at a familiar place: leading the most successful sled hockey team on earth into another Paralympic Winter Games.

Five Paralympic gold medals. Seven World Para Ice Hockey Championships. Eleven Para Hockey Cup titles. The U.S. men’s sled hockey team has seen success at nearly every turn.

A three-time Paralympic gold medalist and seven-time world championship medalist, Farmer has rewritten every career scoring record in U.S. sled hockey history. Entering the 2025 season, he recorded a total of 357 points by way of 203 goals and 154 assists.

Those statistics are the result of countless weeks and months of training for a sport he never expected to turn into his full-time career. It’s a far cry from the years he spent working a second job just to support himself, the days of uncertainty and financial stress. Two decades later, what seemed like a distant dream had become an everyday reality.

But before the medals and world championships, it all began on a rink in Tampa, Florida.

In 2006, a young Declan Farmer took the ice for the first time in his hometown, after searching for a sport he could call his own. Born with bilateral fibular hemimelia, a congenital birth defect meaning part or all of the fibula is missing or underdeveloped, he had both of his legs amputated as a baby.

As is the story for many Paralympians, Farmer says that taking up the sport was “the best thing that ever happened (to him).”

Through high school, competing for a club sponsored by the NHL’s Tampa Bay Lightning, and into his time at Princeton University, Farmer followed the path familiar to most Paralympic athletes of his generation: piecing together part-time careers with full-time ambition. Days were mixed with classes, training, part-time jobs and long commutes to practices with the national team, when he could make them.

The dream was clear, but the support system for pursuing it was still catching up.

That all changed after the Paralympic Winter Games Sochi 2014.

Farmer's debut at Sochi 2014 was a monumental success, ending in a gold medal for Team USA. It helped cement him as one of the sport's brightest young stars. At just 16 years old, the Tampa native succeeded in playing in his first world championships, playing in his first Paralympic Winter Games, and winning the ESPY Award for Best Male Athlete with a Disability all in a single calendar year.

Despite his early success, his path ahead—one that countless Paralympians had navigated before him—remained uncertain.

The real shift came after the Paralympic Winter Games PyeongChang 2018. The growth of the Paralympic Movement, fueled by greater media attention and increased financial support from generous donors, created a new reality.

As the U.S. men’s sled hockey team sets its sights on a fifth consecutive gold—and Farmer on his fourth—the expectations are higher and the work is more intentional than ever. “Sustained excellence in sled hockey is built in the quiet hours,” Farmer says, “the small decisions, the routines that stack into performance.”

Working closely with Team USA’s specialists, Farmer and his teammates have benefitted from a focus on nutrition, fueled by donor support.

“I kind of enjoy that part of sport,” he says. “It becomes almost like its own game, figuring out how to work out smarter, eat better and recover better. A lot of training happens on our own, so learning how to optimize things really matters.”

Those strategies come to life in the details: working with the team nutritionist to dial in carbs before tournaments, hitting protein goals and using cooling techniques during games to maintain output.

“There’s a lot of different stuff that I feel like moves the needle,” he says. “Those little things add up.”

Something else that’s added up over the last decade? Gold medals.

Since 2015, the U.S. men’s sled hockey team has won seven gold medals across the Paralympic Winter Games and the World Para Ice Hockey Championships.

Milano Cortina 2026 will be the result of years of training across the world. From Ostrava, Czechia, and Calgary, Alberta, Canada, to cities across the U.S, Farmer calls these training camps “critical for every season.”

“We all live in different parts of the country, so getting together, even just domestically, is huge. It’s not about getting into shape; it’s about building chemistry and getting reps with teammates I don’t see every day.”

“Coming into Beijing [2022], I was like, ‘Alright, I’ll take some time off before I start working a real job and I’ll just go all in on hockey,’” he recalled. “It’s clear how Paralympic sport has evolved and how it’s become full-time for a lot of athletes.”

For the first time in his sled hockey career, training and competing for Team USA became a full-time profession. Farmer described an internship at Deloitte as the final thing he did before going all in. As part of Deloitte’s SHINE Program, an internal services internship offering hands-on experience in areas like finance and tech, he gained a real-world perspective and mentorship before fully committing to the sport.

And he did just that.

“We started getting more financial support, and a lot of that has to do [with] donors and making it so that the sporting federations and [National Governing Bodies] can support their athletes more,” he says.

That support also came through athlete-specific resources. Farmer received the highly competitive Simon Grant. Established in 1998 by former United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee (USOPC) President William E. Simon, Sr, the Simon Grant provides annual training and competition funding to high-performing Team USA athletes demonstrating financial need. The grant, available to elite athletes training for Paris 2024 and Milano Cortina 2026, helps recipients advance their athletic pursuits through dedicated support.

And the results speak for themselves, considering Farmer's medal count and career scoring record. His legacy is already secure, but he’s far from finished.

With the world’s attention on Milano Cortina 2026 in March, Farmer is thinking beyond the podium. What drives him now is the chance to expand what sled hockey can be and who gets to be part of it.

“Part of what motivates me is raising the bar for the sport,” he says. “I want it to be more competitive, to have more eyes on it. People need to see the cool moments, the big plays—that’s how the sport grows.”

That growth is inseparable from the mission of the Paralympic Movement itself: shifting perceptions and showing the world what’s possible when adaptive athletes are given the opportunity and resources to perform at the highest level.

Sled hockey, Farmer explains, demands an unusually complete kind of athlete: someone who can sustain the cardio of repeated sprints, generate power entirely with their upper body, read the ice strategically and develop the fine-motor precision to skate, pass and shoot in one fluid motion.

“That’s part of why I love hockey,” Farmer says. “You need everything—strength, endurance, coordination, the mental side of a really strategic game.”

“It’s all connected,” he adds. “It’s about being a healthy, well-rounded athlete so you can keep pushing the sport forward.”

But even the most driven athletes need a system that believes in them and a framework for them to grow in.

Knowing that donors believe in him isn’t abstract, it’s the reason he can train full-time. It’s the reason younger athletes are stepping into a system far stronger than the one Farmer joined as a teenager. And it’s the reason U.S. sled hockey continues to attract new talent and new audiences every year.

“This cycle, we’ve got so many guys I’m close with, guys who’ve never won a medal or only got one in Beijing, and it wasn’t the true Paralympic experience,” he says. “You play for a lot of people: your community, your supporters. But above all, you play for your teammates. That’s what hockey is.”

Carrying that legacy forward matters to him. 

“USA Hockey is proud of us. People around the country are proud of us. And we love being the team that brings medals home,” he says.

“But the biggest thing is winning for the guys who haven’t had that moment yet.”

The Milano Cortina Games begin on March 6, with sled hockey matches starting the following day on March 7 at the Milano Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena in Milan, Italy.

For more information about the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Foundation, visit give.teamusa.org (or click here to make a gift).