Sydney Barta doesn’t just run toward a challenge. She sprints.
Last week, the 19-year-old Arlington native won gold and silver medals in the 200- meter and 100-meter races, respectively, at the 2023 Parapan American Games in Santiago, Chile. Held every four years, the games are an international multi-sport event for athletes with physical disabilities.
The wins come three years after her quest for gold at the 2020 Paralympic Games in Tokyo, where she placed fourth in the 200-meter and sixth in the first heat of the 100-meter race.
“I haven’t competed on a world stage like that since the Tokyo Paralympics, so it was a really great way for me to dust the cobwebs off and also show everyone, whether it be Team USA or my competitors who weren’t even in the race, that I’m still here, still competitive, [I] still have it,” says Barta, who lost her left foot at age 6 when a piece of scaffolding fell on her during a Marine Corps Marathon fun run. While she was hospitalized for four months, her foot became infected and needed to be amputated.
Growing up in Cherrydale and attending D.C.’s National Cathedral School, Barta never shied away from sports, participating in volleyball, water polo, basketball, discus, javelin, long jump and, of course, running.
Now a sophomore at Stanford University, she’s narrowed her athletic focus to track and field. It’s been “nice to narrow down the lens and become more of a specialist, which is what going to that next level takes,” Barta says.
That level is qualifying for the Paralympic Games.
“For track, there’s only one event that can qualify you, which is trials for the Paralympics,” she says. With the confidence boost from her performance at the Parapan Games, she’s now looking ahead to the 2024 U.S. Paralympic Team Trials for track and field on July 18-21. The 2024 Olympics start in Paris on July 26, and the Paralympics, also in Paris, run from Aug. 28-Sept. 8.
To prepare, she trains for two and a half hours every day—even on Sundays, her so-called rest days.
“I’m always in the gym in some capacity, whether it’s on the bike or lifting weights, and then I run on the track a fair amount,” Barta says. “Whether it’s track, pool, bike, weight rooms, stretching, getting massages, getting treatment, that all goes into what it takes to reach the level that I’m trying to get up to.”
“The [Paralympic] Games would be a huge, huge, huge thing to get back to and experience [with] spectators,” she adds. “When I went, it was Covid, so the giant stadium was pretty much empty.”
At Stanford, Barta is breaking barriers by becoming the first runner wearing a blade—a prosthetic foot—to participate in some of the school’s track and field invitationals. She uses a blade made by Ossur that is modeled after a cheetah’s hind leg and designed to propel runners forward, according to the manufacturer’s website. (When she’s not sprinting, she uses another prosthetic.)
Her dedication to making the most of everything is apparent off the track, too. A bioengineering major and pre-med, she still finds time for extracurricular activities and helping others. She is the social chairperson of Stanford Counterpoint, an all-girl soprano/alto a cappella group; director of disability advocacy for the Associated Students of Stanford University, a student union; and she tutors fellow students in subjects such as multivariable calculus and differential equations.
Barta says her childhood experience with amputation inspired her desire to go into medicine.
“I’ve always wanted to be a surgeon,” says the athlete, who spent last summer shadowing a sports medicine surgeon. “My whole M.O. of doing medicine in the first place was to help people who are going to have amputation, because the way that my amputation came about was less than optimal. Essentially, they didn’t know where to do the amputation… There wasn’t a specialist, for lack of a better word, who knew what prosthetics were on the market and what would make the quality of life the best after that decision was made. So, I think being someone who specializes in amputation in the orthopedic field is something that’s very motivating for me.”
In Arlington, the sprinter’s favorite place to run is the Washington-Liberty High School track, “but I don’t want everyone to know about that, because it’s such a good track,” she jokes. “I love it so much. I did all of my training for the Paralympics on that track.”
What she does want people to know about, however, is the growth in support for inclusive sports. In 2018, the U.S. Olympic Committee began paying Paralympic athletes the same amount as Olympians.
“Watch the Paralympics and watch para sports and give it a chance,” Barta says. “There’s so much space for everyone to be included in athletics.”