How Sydney Peterson Balances Paralympic Skiing and a PhD in Neuroscience

March 7, 2026 — TOWN & COUNTRY MAGAZINE (story link)‍ ‍by Emily Burack

The cross-country skier competes for Team USA, all while researching rare genetic diseases at the University of Utah.

Sydney Peterson started skiing when she was just five years old. “It was a great way to enjoy the Minnesota winter,” she says. “I was lucky enough to grow up in a community of cross country skiers, and so that’s really what sparked the interest.”

Peterson began competing at the collegiate level at St. Lawrence University, but when she was a sophomore, however, her symptoms of dystonia—a neurological movement disorder—began to progress rapidly, affecting the mobility in her left arm and leg. “I wanted to find ways to still compete at a high level, despite things looking a little bit differently,” she says. “I had to ski with a brace and one pole.” She reached out to Paralympic coaches, eventually got classified (a complicated and daunting process, which she explains below), and began racing with the U.S. Paralympic team.

At the Beijing Paralympics, Peterson left a three-time medalist, and is looking to repeat at the upcoming Milan Paralympics. Here, she tells Town & Country about her journey with skiing, how her experience in China prepares her for Italy, and how she’s simultaneously pursuing her PhD in neuroscience.

How does one get into the world of Paralympic skiing?

It’s a little bit complicated. So first you have to get on the coach’s radar and get them to agree to let you get classified, which can be a process. But then once they show interest in you and are in agreement to let you get classified, then you go to a competition that has classification available. You go in front of a panel of classifiers, which is an international panel and made up of either doctors or physical therapists that are familiar with the sport and familiar with the medical classification system. And they assess your level of disability and how that’ll impact your sport.

The goal is to make you into a classification that’s fair and equitable so that you’re competing against people based on your ability and athleticism, just like in normal sport, rather than who would be most disabled or most favorable. It’s not a perfect system, but they do their best job, and then the panel assigns you a specific classification. They assess you technically while you’re out skiing. They assess you in competition, and then from there you can still be put under review. So my classification’s under review, so they continue to monitor it, which is a great thing. So that way if things ever change, they can keep it as fair as possible.

Was it daunting to begin that process?

It can be a little bit overwhelming and it can feel a little bit like you’re giving your medical information to a stranger, but it’s understandable and they’re extremely professional in the way that they go about it, and they’re very respectful.

How did you find a coach?

It took a lot of emails. It took 12 emails with no response. And I kept emailing and kept emailing and no one responded to me. And then eventually they said, “Sure, you can come and get classified.” And they were having an event in Craftsbury [in Vermont], where they were showing coaches and teaching them how to help adapt their ski programs for para-athletes. I just showed up and I said, “Hey, I’m here.” I knew that I could be competitive with these other athletes because I had raced in races at the college level, and I knew that I had results that were comparable to them. I just had to get on their radar. It took over a dozen emails with no response. Eventually, once I was in the system, then everything worked out.

It stinks that the onus is on the athlete to make that happen.

It’s weird because for most of my teammates, [they] had a very different situation. Most of my teammates don’t come from a skiing background; most of my teammates were actually recruited by the coaches. So if you come from a background of just disability, generally, you get recruited from the coaches. But it’s really ironic, if you come from a background of skiing, [you don’t get recruited]. I had to push my way in.

What was it like once you were on the team and going to Beijing for going to your first Paralympics?

Once I was on the team, everything was great. Going to the first Paralympics was a really cool experience. It was a very interesting Paralympics for a lot of reasons out of all of our controls, just because there were a lot of sanctions on us due to COVID regulations and things being in China. But it was really neat to get to meet athletes from all around the world and from very unique backgrounds. And it was also a very fast learning curve, going from NCAA skiing to skiing at a much higher level. I had never experienced that level of racing before.

There were many nuances that I was not accustomed to. I didn’t know what drug testing looked like. I didn’t know what that level of ski testing or wax testing looked like. I had my one pair of race skis and now all of a sudden people had fleets of skis, and I was like, “Oh, okay. This is really cool.” there was a lot to get used to and they were all extremely positive changes, things that I probably take for granted now.

So going into Milan, do you feel like you’re a different skier?

Going into Beijing, I didn’t know any of my teammates very well. I didn’t know who the coaches and staff were. Now I have established relationships with them, and so I’m much more comfortable with all of them, which helps a ton. And I’m much more familiar with the processes that go on before races. Ultimately, once you start a race, every single race is the same. Once you’ve started, you’re just skiing as fast as you can. That process is the same, but getting to the start line [at the Paralympics] you have to go through different checkpoints to go through. And then afterwards there’s media and mixed zones. And that was all new to me; but hopefully this time around I’ll be a bit more prepared.

What does it mean to you to represent Team USA in the Paralympics?

Growing up you always watch the World Cup and you watch the Olympics, but you never, at least for myself, I never imagined being there. I just skied because I loved the sport and I loved the process of skiing. It was never about winning a specific race, but a lot of my mentors and people that I looked up to were racing on World Cup or racing in the Olympics. It’s really cool to now to get to be in a position where I get to race at the Paralympics. It’s a neat milestone knowing that it didn’t just happen all at once. It happened from small incremental steps building on top of each other.

I know you’re also pursuing your PhD in neuroscience at the University of Utah right now. What drew you to study the brain?

I’ve always been interested in math and science. As I began taking classes in undergrad, I decided to major in neuroscience. With that, I worked in research labs, and I really liked the process of trying to figure out things that weren’t known. I did a couple of different summer research internships, one at Montana State University where I was able to train for the summer, and then one here at the University of Utah. And I really enjoyed the one at University of Utah, and that’s the lab that I ended up joining. So now I study a rare genetic disease. Part of what’s pushed me towards this is my own personal experience with my neurological disorder and seeing how research and its impacts on therapeutics have personally benefited me.

How do you balance your studies and your research with training? Do you have any free time?

It can be tough at times, but I think that they balance each other really well. I am a pretty active person and I just like to move a lot. And so if I wasn’t doing stuff, I think I would get bored easily. I don’t think I would be able to focus in lab and get stuff anything done if I didn’t go and ski in the morning and then ski in the afternoon. But I also think that by having lab work, it helps me not dwell on things with skiing and keeps my mind occupied.

Also, many of my friends are also skiers. I’m really good friends with all my college teammates; they’re some of my closest friends. And so I view training as a big part of my social time. That's where I go on adventures in the mountains and bonding with people and hanging out with them. The two feed off of each other more than counteract each other.

When you’re heading to Italy, what do your lab mates think?

They know that I ski, and luckily, they’re extremely supportive of it. If [my lab] was not supportive of skiing, there’s no way I would be able to just get on a plane and frolic over to Europe for training camps and World Cups. I think I balance it well; I get my work done, I get data and I do experiments so that I have data to analyze when I’m on the road and I have reading and writing to do on the road. But I’m lucky to have an extremely supportive lab that helps enable this lifestyle, which I’m extremely thankful for.

What are you most looking forward to about Italy and about the Paralympics?

I’m really excited to get to ski in an iconic venue and get to race with just my competitors. I love to ski and I love to race, and the Italian Alps are beautiful, and so we won’t be locked down this time. We’ll be allowed to go and explore. I hope that maybe on some of the off days or after we’re done competing, we can go and ski around outside of the courses. But yeah, I've never skied in that area, but it looks really cool and awesome and just absolutely beautiful. I would love to go there and just ski for a month and go from village to village to village. I know people go on ski backpacking trips and that sounds so cool.