Tammy Landeen split her childhood between New Brunswick, Canada and northern Maine. Living in a rural town, she didn’t participate in organized sports. Instead, she enjoyed activities like snowmobiling, kayaking, canoeing, and spending all her free time at the town pool.
She joined the Army with her high school sweetheart right after graduating in 1995. Her stepdad, an Army veteran, challenged her by saying she couldn’t make it. She joined mainly to prove him wrong, but quickly fell in love with her time in the service. She worked as a generator mechanic, taking a year long tour in Korea in 1996 before being stationed around the US.
During her service, she married her high school sweetheart and had two girls. Tammy and her husband were dual military members up until 2005 when Tammy decided to retire after a training accident where a two and a half ton trailer collapsed on her foot.
Tammy focused on being a stay at home mom while her husband started endless rounds of deployments. She quickly took up horseback riding as a therapeutic activity, riding her horse daily. One day, her horse got spooked, throwing Tammy full speed into a tree. She broke 28 bones along with her back in five places. She was put in a medical coma for two months and when she awoke, she was paralyzed from T12 down. Four more months were spent in the hospital recovering and dealing with the diagnosis of being paralysed.
For six years after her injury, Tammy was miserable and harbored a lot of anger. She didn’t even want to get involved in the adaptive community. That all changed one day when she reluctantly agreed to hand cycle. She immediately fell in love with the sport and the ability to compete. She began racing and doing marathons and to date has done around 50 total.
Her family moved back up to her home state of Maine, after her husband retired from 20 years of service. There Tammy decided to pursue another sport. One of Tammy’s friends, ATF alumni Lee Kuxhaus, told her about bobsledding and encouraged her to get involved. Tammy attended a local camp then passed a qualifier in Norway to make it on to Team USA in 2019. She has competed the past two seasons for the Para Bobsled team and is now in her off-season.
Tammy is looking to use Hyper as a foundation for her off-season training. Her goals are to safely and effectively learn how to use her body along with get a solid fitness baseline going into her third bobsled season.
