For as long as she can remember, Sydney Peterson has been drawn to cross-country skiing. Growing up in Stillwater, Minnesota, right on the border with Wisconsin, she began around the age of 5. Throughout her adolescence, she tried multiple sports, including swimming and running, but Nordic skiing is what she loved the most.

“I really enjoyed skiing because all my friends did it and I got to be outside moving my body,” she explained. Everything was going well until she began to notice some changes in her body’s ability to physically function.

“When I was 13, I started having movement difficulties in my left arm, and I was quite sick,” she said. “We didn’t really know what was going on for a long time.”

Despite the physical challenges, Peterson continued cross-country skiing, joined the high school team and started racing with them.

“I began to pursue it more seriously, training year-round for it and doing the high school races in addition to junior national qualifying races,” she said.

After high school, she went to St. Lawrence University, a small college in upstate New York, to ski and study neuroscience.

“I’ve always been really interested in math and science,” she said. “It was when I was 19 that I was diagnosed with dystonia.”

Dystonia is a neurological condition where a person has uncontrollable muscle movements in some part of their body that occurs due to faulty signals coming from the brain.

“When I was 19, my left arm and leg became partially paralyzed, so that’s what eventually led me to skiing in the Paralympics,” she said.

During college, she was able to secure research internships at labs at Montana State University and the University of Utah. Upon graduation from college, she came directly to the U into the doctoral program for neuroscience.

As if excelling academically wasn’t enough, Peterson has also maintained and improved her Nordic skiing abilities in spite of her medical issues.

“It was really tough because at first, when my disease was progressing, I thought that skiing would be over for me, and I didn’t know if I was gonna be able to do anything,” she said. “I was losing my ability to walk and kind of headed in a trajectory of being wheelchair bound, which was quite scary. But I really wanted to find ways to continue to do what I loved and to continue to ski at a high level.”

Throughout undergrad, she continued to ski on her college team and competed with the U.S. Paralympic team. During that time, she also had a breakthrough with her medical condition.

“Two years ago, I had a brain surgery, and that has luckily been quite successful in slowing the progression of my disease,” Peterson said. “That’s been tremendously helpful.”

She skis with a brace on her left side because she has no movement from her left knee down and generally skis with one pole.

Today, Peterson is not only one of the best adaptive Nordic skiers in the world, but she is also a Paralympic champion. During the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing, she attained a medal hat-trick—winning gold, silver and bronze across multiple events.

“I completed the set, which is pretty cool. I know technically gold, silver and silver would have been better, but I think the whole set is kind of cool,” Peterson said. “It was a pretty exciting experience.”

At the 2026 games, she added two more medals — another gold and another silver — to increase her total to five Paralympic medals!

She said becoming a high-achieving athlete and student has not been easy; however, the fruits of her labor have been well worth all the hard work she has put in over the years.

“It was certainly extremely hard at times, but I was really lucky. I had an extremely supportive community at St. Lawrence, and now being out here in Salt Lake, I have a really good supportive community,” she said. “I’d say relying on a great support network has made the difference.”

Next stop, Milano Cortina, Italy. The 2026 Paralympics begin on March 6.