Inside a lab at the University of Utah, Sydney Peterson inspects containers of fruit flies. As part of her doctoral research, the Paralympian is using fruit flies to test the effectiveness of different drugs on certain genetic movement disorders.
Emily Chen-Newton
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Emily Chen-Newton
SALT LAKE CITY — With the 2026 Winter Paralympics set to open Friday in Milan and Cortina, athletes are busy preparing for their Games. One such athlete is Sydney Peterson, a member of the U.S. Paralympic Ski Team. She is also working towards her PhD in neuroscience at the University of Utah — looking at movement disorders, similar to her condition. Peterson’s days are a balancing act between the lab and her skis.
Peterson, who began cross-country skiing at age five, 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.
As a multi-medal Paralympian (she won gold, silver and bronze at the 2022 Beijing Paralympics), she’s at the top of her game.
But when she was 13, just beginning to experience symptoms, skiing became her physical therapy.
“It’s much more fun to be able to do that after school with your friends than alone in a clinic,” she said.
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.
“But, I was really fortunate that I still had all my teammates, still had my college coach. I was able to show up to practice each day. I still had that continuity.”
Now at 23, and working towards the doctorate degree, Peterson’s days revolve around two communities: on the slopes and in the lab. So, 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.
Sydney Peterson, who typically skis with just one pole because of her neurological condition, is shown during a training session at the 2022 Winter Paralympics on March 02, 2022 in Zhangjiakou, China.
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They’re using fruit flies to test the effectiveness of different drugs on certain genetic movement disorders. Walking into the “fly room” Peterson raises her voice to speak over the hum of the lab’s many incubators. She opens the door to one, “These are flies that are going through an experiment right now, and so this is kept at the right humidity, the right temperature…lighting for sleep/wake cycles.”
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.
“A lot of the drugs we test here, I’ve taken them before,” she said with a laugh.
Peterson then points at rows of small plastic bottles filled with tiny flies on the counter. “These ones are sick, these ones are healthy. And if I tap these…”
She explains that 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.
Paralympian Sydney Peterson shows an ankle brace she uses for skiing.
Emily Chen-Newton
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Emily Chen-Newton
While her condition can’t be cured, she notes she’s benefited from research like this. And Peterson said she benefits from pursuing both competitive skiing and grad school at the same time.
“You’re not gonna always be doing well in skiing, and grad school also obviously has its hurdles, where experiments work, experiments don’t work. And obviously that’s frustrating, but it’s nice to be able to put that to the side and just go for your workout. I think they can feed off of each other if you structure it correctly.”
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.
“I think that would hit way too close to home. But I do think on a larger scope, it is nice and rewarding to know from like a macro perspective, what we’re doing can have a positive impact on patients’ lives.”
But for now, Peterson just needs to get in her second workout of the day, preparing to compete in several Paralympic ski events in Italy, including all three distances of cross-country skiing.
