Tyler Carron and Nikko Landeros were changing a tire on the side of a road in Berthoud, Colorado when the car hit them. They had been at a school dance, both 17. When the two SUVs stopped moving, both of them had lost their legs below the knee.

They ended up in adjacent hospital rooms. Carron, a senior, was focused on walking through his graduation ceremony in May. Landeros, who hated his prosthetics from the start, decided if Carron was going to push, he had to keep up. That is, roughly, how Team USA's sled hockey dynasty got its start.

Into the Ice

Landeros had played hockey for most of his life. He knew what was waiting for both of them. He brought Carron into sled hockey, and within a year they were on the ice together again, this time on sleds, in Colorado, in a state that would come to define American dominance in the sport.

Jerry DeVaul, who helped build Colorado's sled hockey program, has described what those two players meant to the generation of athletes who came after them: "Nico and Tyler were the original guys that started bringing everyone to Colorado because everyone wanted to play with them. Those two were like the original bash brothers of sled hockey."

By 2009, Carron had made his first U.S. National Junior Sled Hockey Team. In 2010, he was on the senior national team. The two of them, both from Berthoud, had gone from a roadside in Colorado to the U.S. Paralympic program in three years.

Gold at Sochi

At the 2014 Winter Paralympics in Sochi, Carron and Nikko Landeros were on the same team and won gold for the United States. Carron had two Paralympic gold medals to his name after Sochi: Vancouver 2010 and now Sochi 2014. Landeros was on the same podium.

Colorado's sled hockey program was producing champions, and the two men from Berthoud were at the center of it.

PyeongChang and What Happened After

At the 2018 Winter Paralympics in PyeongChang, Team USA won its fourth consecutive gold. Carron was on that team.

In a urine sample collected on March 12, 2018, following a match against the Czech Republic, Carron returned a positive test for methadone. The substance is prohibited under the World Anti-Doping Agency's list for narcotics. The International Paralympic Committee handed him an 18-month ban, running from March 2018 through September 2019. His results from March 12 onward were disqualified. The PyeongChang gold medal was stripped.

The ban ended in September 2019. There is no record of Carron competing at the 2022 Beijing Winter Paralympics or at the 2026 Milan Games. The career that started in those adjacent hospital rooms in Berthoud ended, officially, with two gold medals and one missing.

What the Pipeline Kept

The sled hockey program he and Landeros built in Colorado didn't stop when he did.

Declan Farmer, who finished the 2026 Games as para ice hockey's all-time leading scorer, came out of the Colorado training environment. Josh Pauls, the captain who became the first player in the sport to win five consecutive Paralympic golds, was shaped by the culture Carron and Landeros seeded.

In March 2026, Team USA won that fifth gold in Milan. Nikko Landeros was on the opposite bench, wearing Italy's colors after switching nationalities for the country his mother is from. Carron wasn't in the building.

His two official gold medals are from Vancouver 2010 and Sochi 2014. The pipeline runs from those two teenagers in adjacent hospital rooms, through Colorado Springs, to five straight Paralympic championships. Carron's name is in the foundation of all of it, even if it stopped appearing on rosters.

For families looking to connect children with adaptive hockey and sled sports programs, the Paralympic adaptive sports guide covers entry points across all six sports from the 2026 Games.