Sydney Peterson is among the U.S. athletes heading to the 2026 Winter Paralympics. A neuroscientist in training, Peterson is studying movement disorders, similar to her own condition.
SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Cross-country skier Sydney Peterson is in the U.S. delegation at the 2026 Winter Paralympics, now underway in Italy. She is also a neuroscientist who studies movement disorders similar to her condition. Before Sydney Peterson traveled to her second Winter Games, she spent the day with reporter Emily Chen-Newton in Salt Lake City.
EMILY CHEN-NEWTON: Sydney Peterson began cross-country skiing at age 5.
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CHEN-NEWTON: She has a neurological condition known as dystonia that causes involuntary muscle contractions in her left arm and leg, so typically, she skis with only one pole. With a custom left ankle brace and a ski pole in her right hand, she glides across the snow evenly, side to side.
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CHEN-NEWTON: As a multimedal Paralympian, she’s at the top of her game. But when she was 13, just beginning to experience symptoms, skiing became her physical therapy.
SYDNEY PETERSON: It’s much more fun to be able to do that after school with your friends than having to do it alone in a clinic.
CHEN-NEWTON: Peterson credits her friends and team with helping her cope as her symptoms got much worse in college. Over time, the muscle contractions forced her left hand and ankle into fixed positions.
PETERSON: But I was really fortunate that I still had all my teammates. I still had my college coach. I was able to show up to practice each day, still had that continuity.
CHEN-NEWTON: Now at 23, working on her Ph.D. in neuroscience, on a typical day, Peterson toggles between two communities – on the slopes and in the lab. After her first workout of the day, she heads to the University of Utah to check on experiments she’s running in a rare disease lab.
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CHEN-NEWTON: They’re using fruit flies to test the effectiveness of different drugs on certain genetic movement disorders.
PETERSON: This is, like, the fly room. These are incubators.
CHEN-NEWTON: She opens the door.
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PETERSON: We have a bunch of flies, and these are flies that are going through an experiment right now. This is kept at the correct humidity, correct temperature, lighting for, like, sleep-wake cycles.
CHEN-NEWTON: Peterson and her colleagues are testing medications already approved by the Food and Drug Administration. They’re not investigating her condition specifically, but there’s overlap, she says.
PETERSON: A lot of the drugs that we test here, I’ve taken before.
CHEN-NEWTON: Peterson points at rows of small plastic bottles filled with tiny flies.
PETERSON: These ones are sick. These ones are healthy. If I tap these…
(SOUNDBITE OF TAPPING CONTAINER)
CHEN-NEWTON: After the sick flies fall to the bottom of the container, she watches to see if they crawl back up the sides, indicating the drugs might be helping.
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CHEN-NEWTON: While her condition can’t be cured, she notes she’s benefited from research like this, and Peterson says she benefits from pursuing both competitive skiing and grad school at the same time.
PETERSON: You’re not going to always be doing well in skiing, and grad school also obviously has its hurdles, where experiments work, experiments don’t work. It’s nice to be able to put that to the side and then just go for your workout. They can feed off of each other if you structure it correctly.
CHEN-NEWTON: She deals with physical setbacks by focusing more on her experiments and hopes for a career in clinical research, though she says she would never want to work on her own disease.
PETERSON: I think that would hit way too close to home. But I do think a larger scope, it is nice and rewarding to know what we’re doing can hopefully have a positive impact on patients’ lives.
CHEN-NEWTON: But for now, Peterson needs to get in her second workout of the day, preparing to compete in several Paralympic cross-country ski events in Italy.
For NPR News, I’m Emily Chen-Newton in Salt Lake City.
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