BEIJING, China — Editor's Note: The video above originally aired on KARE 11 on Feb. 9, 2022.
Congratulations are in order for Minnesota natives and Sydney Peterson and Mike Schultz for making a splash at the 2022 Paralympics in Beijing.
Peterson, a first-time Paralympian, won her second medal in two days by claiming bronze in Nordic skiing women’s sprint standing.
"It was a super challenging race,” Peterson said after the race. ““Lots of components going into it throughout the day, but I'm super excited about how it stacked up. I had a ton of people that were out there helping and cheering and it wouldn't have been possible without all their support.”
The bronze follows a silver medal awarded for a second place finish in Nordic skiing Para Cross Country.
The 20-year-old from Lake Elmo, Minnesota, is relatively new to para sports. She developed reflex sympathetic dystrophy and dystonia in her left arm at 13, which over time began to also affect mobility in her leg.
Last year, Peterson won silver in middle-distance cross-country and the cross-country sprint at the World Para Snow Sports Championships, along with bronze in long distance cross-country. She currently competes collegiately for Saint Lawrence and says her college teammates and coaches are some of her biggest supporters stateside during that Games.
"My parents and my family are super supportive of everything here,” Peterson said. “Then I've got my college team, all my friends and teammates and my coach from college, and they've been super supportive through everything. Everyone's super supportive.”
Schultz, a snowboarder from St. Cloud, Minnesota and two-time Paralympian added another medal to his collection this morning in Beijing, winning silver in the men's snowboard cross SB-LL1. The Kimball Area High School alum previously won two medals at the PyeongChang games in 2018: gold in snowboardcross and silver in banked slalom.
Schultz became an amputee after competing in a snowcross event in 2008 and fracturing his knee so badly that it eventually had to be amputated. But that didn't stop Schultz from continuing to pursue his love of actions sports. After the surgery, he built his own prosthetic knee and went on to earn a motocross adaptive silver medal at the X Games.
An athlete, author and public speaker, Schultz created his company BioDapt after his amputation, which "designs, manufactures and distributes high performance lower-limb prosthetic components used for action sports and other similar activities."
And by the looks of it, BioDapt has lived up to its mission at the 2022 Paralympics. Twenty-six athletes in Beijing are using equipment engineered by Schultz.
On top of now being a 3-time Paralympic medalist, Schultz is also a three-time ESPN X Games motocross medalist, six-time X Games gold medalist in snocross and 2019 - ESPN Winter X Games adaptive snow bikecross gold medalist.
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