Sydney Peterson, Dani Aravich Turn Empire State Red, White And Blue For 100 Days Out

With the flip of one giant switch, Sydney Peterson and Dani Aravich lit up the Empire State Building in red, white and blue on Tuesday.

The Para Nordic teammates joined Team USA speedskater Brittany Bowe, freestyle skier Alex Ferriera and sled hockey player Jack Wallace for the photo-op celebrating the 100-day countdown to the 2026 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games in Milano and Cortina, Italy.

Sarah Hirshland, the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee CEO, said the iconic tower will “quite literally light the way for the next 100 days as we finish our road to the Milan Cortina Winter Games.”

“It’s really a reminder for all of us that what this represents is something that unites this country, and for the athletes of Team USA, a reminder to all of you that we got you,” Hirshland said. “We’re all here. These Games are your Games, but they’re also our Games, and we’re excited about what’s to come.”

The Winter Olympics kick off on Feb. 6, followed one month later by the Winter Paralympics on March 6.

Peterson and Aravich, who both competed at the 2022 Winter Paralympics in Beijing, are in New York as part of the Team USA Media Summit.

After flipping the switch in the lobby of the iconic tower and then moving up to the main observation deck on the 86th floor, the athletes took an even higher journey up to the 102nd floor.

“There’s literally no fence or anything. It’s just a normal, waist-high guardrail,” Peterson said. “And then you can see all the way down, which is really neat. And a little scary, a little queasy.”

For Peterson, who attended St. Lawrence College in the far northern reaches of the state, the whirlwind trip to Manhattan is already providing a new perspective of the state.

“Whenever I’m like, ‘Oh, I’ve been to New York before,’ they think you’re accustomed to the city,” she said. “But it’s very, very different. That is rural New York. And this is very city New York.”

The Media Summit experience also marks a huge departure from the build-up to her first Paralympics.

“Four years ago at this time point the Paralympics weren’t even on my radar yet,” she said.

In fact, Peterson, who grew up cross-country skiing in her hometown of St. Elmo, Minnesota, was still competing exclusively in able-bodied races at the time. Upon learning the reflex sympathetic dystrophy and dystonia in her left arm made her eligible for Para Nordic, she sought her classification and officially got the nod for Team USA just days before leaving for Beijing.

Once there, Peterson won three medals — a gold, silver and bronze.

Since then, Peterson, now 23, has graduated from St. Lawrence, begun working on a doctorate at the University of Utah and undergone invasive brain surgery … all while earning seven medals at the world championships.

“The past four years have definitely gone by really fast,” Peterson said. “I think looking back to when I was a little kid, and you’d watch the Games every four years, it seemed like four years was such a long time, and it’s almost like you wanted them to be more often. … Now being a part of it, four years seems so fast, and it’s just this reverse mentality of there’s not enough time to actually train and prepare.”

Yet Peterson, who is studying to be a neuroscientist and working full-time in a neurogenetics lab, remains analytical about the final countdown to Italy.

Sure, lighting the Empire State Building was cool, and events like the Media Summit ramp up the excitement for the upcoming Games. But “at the end of the day,” Peterson said, “it’s not that much different than any other year.”

“We’ll still have our world cup races, and it’s not like the races themselves are any different than the other races,” she continued. “They’re still the same competitors. It’s just a bigger scale of an event. … So when you boil it down, it’s not technically different, it’s just mentally different.”

Chrös McDougall has covered the Olympic and Paralympic Movement for the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee since 2009 on behalf of Red Line Editorial, Inc. He is based in Minneapolis-St. Paul.