Sled hockey's Declan Farmer makes us smart about the Winter Paralympics
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Hello, everyone. I'm Kimberly Adams. Welcome back to Make Me Smart, where none of us is as smart as all of us. If you've been keeping up with the Winter Olympics, I have some good news for you. The games are not over yet. The Winter Paralympics kick off in Milan on March 6th. So today we're going to zoom in to one Winter Paralympic sport, sled hockey or para ice hockey. Here to make us smart about it is Declan Farmer, the three-time gold medalist in sled hockey. We're catching him before he heads to Milan. Declan, welcome to the show.
Hey, Kimberly. Thank you so much for having me on.
Declan, thank you so much for making time for us in between your practices for the Paralympics. I know you're getting ready to head over. For those who aren't familiar with the sport, what is sled hockey?
Sled hockey is an adaptive version of typical stand-up ice hockey. So the biggest difference is in equipment. We are sitting in what's called a sled. So basically you just have a kind of a contraption that's on the ice. You still have two skate blades. You're just kind of sitting on top of it and they're kind of mounted to a metal frame. And then you have what's called like a bucket that just goes around like your hips and thighs and butt. It's basically kind of like a cast form that just holds you tight to the rest of the sled and then instead of one stick you have two sticks um they're a bit shorter and they have ice picks on the bottom so think kind of cross-country skiing style for skating and then if you want to handle the puck or shoot you slide your hands down to the butt end of the stick to do that so you're doing everything with your upper body it's still full contact it's five on five with a goalie it's it's all the same um rules as stand-up hockey just with the equipment adaptations
When did you start playing sled hockey?
I started when I was eight years old. I used two prosthetics to two leg prosthetics to walk. So I've, you know, since I was a kid, so I started pretty young and yeah, it was the first like a disabled sport I tried and I just love the camaraderie of it. I like that there was some speed, some physicality, just kind of the multi-dimensions dimensionality of, of hockey. And it just kind of stuck with me. And I think I, Played it for fun as a kid and then got serious with it within a few years.
Talk about your journey to be a Paralympian.
Yeah, I didn't know what the Paralympics were when I first started playing sled hockey. I don't think I even saw them until 2010, which was the Vancouver Games. I was 12 years old at the time. So I think around that time, I started playing it more seriously, going to tournaments outside of, you know, my home state of Florida. And that's when I realized like, hey, I'm like, you know, pretty good for my age group here. And I think I can make a run at this. I started getting more motivated, training, skating more. And I made the Sochi Paralympic team when I was, I was 16 at those games. So I was a sophomore in high school. And that's kind of when things got started. And then I'm, you know, training for Milan, which will be my fourth games here.
Who is Team USA's biggest rival heading into the games in Milan?
Canada is definitely our biggest rival. It's similar to a lot of the other divisions of hockey, the men's women's standup teams. I mean, everyone involved with hockey, at least as familiar with the four nations cup this past year where us and Canada, you know, they have the big fights and, and all that stuff.
What are the basics of sled hockey?
And, So it's definitely a similar rivalry in sled hockey where Canada and U.S. kind of are each other's toughest competition these days. We play them a lot. We don't like them. They don't like us. And, you know, what part of what makes a rivalry great is, you know, you respect your opponent to a certain extent where we feel like if we're not bringing our best, like we have a chance where we could lose. And that's like, you know, that's the fun part about sports where it can kind of go either way. And, you know, you get those butterflies and stuff before the games.
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