How a detour from a dream job took Dani Aravich to Paralympic Winter and Summer Games and the Utah 2034 bid stage
As the world marks International Day of Persons with Disabilities, Olympics.com spoke to two-time Paralympian Dani Aravich who proves that taking a leading role in your life sometimes also requires taking a daring leap into the unknown.
Paralympic Games
For as long as she could remember, Dani Aravich dreamed of having a job in professional sports. She was thrilled to land that dream job fresh out of university – a sales department role in the sleek, glass-covered offices of the Utah Jazz NBA team in Salt Lake City, USA.
But then, just over a year later, she gave up her full-time position for a brand new dream of qualifying to the Paralympic Games in two disciplines she has never done before.
It was a gamble. And the gamble paid off, big.
In the five years since, the American has gone to not one but two Paralympic Games as an athlete and a third as a content creator. She also stood on stage at an Olympic Games as part of the Salt Lake City-Utah 2034 bid delegation alongside Olympic champion Lindsey Vonn and the most influential politicians from her adopted state.
It was a full-circle moment for Aravich, as she gave a speech from the podium about why the Olympic and Paralympic Games should return to Utah’s capital after 32 years. The owner of Utah Jazz, Ryan Smith, was part of the delegation as well, along with some vice presidents from Aravich’s time in the office.
One of those VPs had helped her find coaching when she started to train for the Paralympics. Now he approached her with words of praise.
"It was cool for him to be like, 'Look how you started and look where you're at now. I couldn't have even imagined that this is where you'd take it and run'," Aravich recalled.
An international-level athlete in Para Nordic skiing, "Paralympic Snoop Dog" for Team USA, Salt Lake City-Utah 2034 delegate, trailblazing content creator and advocate for the Paralympic Movement – Aravich has more than one dream job now. And it all started with a daring leap and a mission that sometimes seemed overly audacious even to her.
Dani Aravich, Lindsey Vonn and other members of the delegation celebrate Salt Lake City-Utah being named as the hosts of the 2034 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
From dream job to chasing a dream: Dani Aravich starts new mission
Cowboy boots. Cowboy hat. A T-shirt with a bald eagle print, a stars-and-stripes bandana and a blue wig. Two-time Paralympian and “Content Cowgirl” Dani Aravich is not someone who blends into the background. Not does she want to.
"I wanted to become how Snoop Dogg was for the Olympics for Team USA,” Aravich said of the vibrant outfits she paraded at the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games while creating behind-the-scenes content for her nation’s team. "I really wanted to, as best I could, provide some type of entertainment back to the athletes. It's so fun when at sporting events the audience and the crowd really get into things. It just makes the athletes on the court or the field of play want to put on that much better of a show."
Aravich’s enthusiasm for Para sports is remarkable considering that until 2019 she knew little about the Paralympic Games.
The Idaho native, who was born without her left hand and forearm, grew up running long distance and competed at high school and collegiate level before stepping away from sport to focus on her studies. It was only four years later, in January 2019, that she learned she was eligible to race at the Paralympics.
By that point, however, she had already landed her dream job at Utah Jazz. At least, it looked like a dream job on paper – Aravich was beginning to feel “a lack of purpose” in the sales position.
The possibility of returning to a competitive athletics career proved the ultimate tipping point.
"I was chasing that thing for all of college and, even growing up, my dream was to be working for a pro sports team. So I was chasing it and then once I got there and saw the potential trajectory of my path, it just didn't excite me quite as much," Aravich said.
"It was also this looming thought that I never really finished my personal sports career how I wanted to. I had ended competing while I was in college and I didn't really end on a note that I was thrilled with or happy about, so that was always looming too. And when the Paralympics opportunity arose, it was an opportunity to chase a new dream."
Aravich started to chase that dream in February 2019, combining nearly 50 hours of work with 15 hours of training each week. Those training hours increased when she switched to part-time that August, but the athlete also had to pick up side jobs to pay the bills, including social media projects and early morning shifts at the gym.
The fall that became the push
Training in athletics, while not new to her, was still a major adjustment for Aravich. She previously specialised in long-distance and cross-country running, but the longest race that was available in her T47 Paralympic classification was the 400m sprint.
Oddly enough, it was a fumbled race that convinced the reluctant distance runner-turned-sprinter that she was moving in the right direction.
Aravich was six months into her athletics comeback, still balancing training with full-time work, when she went to one of the biggest Para track meets in the United States. The meet was an official classification opportunity, so almost all the USA Paralympians and Paralympic hopefuls were in attendance.
"It was there that I fell in a 400 with like 10 metres left," Aravich recalled. "To fall in such a public way – and it's like my first time being around other Para athletes who ultimately would be my teammates or my competitors for making Team USA the following year – it was like, 'Oh my God, if I can't even run around this track once without falling, should I be doing this at all?'
"I was like, 'OK, I think I'm done. I fell', and my mom was like, 'You can't end on that! You got to give at least one more year. You can always go back and get a job, but you're only physically going to have so much time to try this'."
With these words ringing in her mind, Aravich launched into training with even more effort, making the switch to part-time work to pursue her Paralympic dream.
Little did she know, that dream would soon become a lot bigger than making it to Tokyo 2020.
Life on track and snow: Dani Aravich's pursuit of two Paralympic Games
One year stretched to two as the Tokyo 2020 Games were postponed to 2021 due to the Covid pandemic. The general plan stayed the same, however: Aravich would sign off on a competitive career after her Paralympic debut.
"My family really thought that it was going to be Tokyo and done, like it would be a 'I'm taking back my ownership over running. I'm ending my athletic career on my terms'," Aravich said. "And then I'll return to the workforce and do the traditional 9 to 5."
The marketing major may well have returned to the "9 to 5" if not for a chance invitation she received in December 2019. The US Para Nordic developmental coach heard about the track runner's endurance background and invited her to take part in a ski camp.
Aravich's cross-country skiing experience up to that point consisted of a one-off trip in her teenage years. She felt "klutzy" strapping on those skis for the second time, but all that discomfort paled in comparison to how much joy she felt racing longer distances again.
"I wasn't in love with the sprints. If someone watched me race, they'd be like, 'You run it like a distance runner'," Aravich said. "That's why Nordic's been cool. You can take someone who has endurance, but then you have to teach them the very hard technique of skiing. But maybe once those two come together, it will be magical."
The Para Nordic experience was magical indeed. So much so that Aravich decided to try and qualify for the Beijing 2022 Winter Games as well.
This left her a mere six-month gap between the Summer and Winter Paralympic Games. Beating the odds, she made it to Tokyo 2020 in 2021, finishing 10th in the 400m T47, and cracked into the Top 10 twice at Beijing 2022.
As new sponsorship and work opportunities started coming through, Aravich realised she might not need to return to the office job after all. Suddenly Para sports seemed like a viable way to make a living, and the greater self-love she discovered on the journey was the priceless gift that came along with it.
"Being a Paralympian, it's like finally embracing that disability side of identity that I never embraced growing up, also mostly due to a lack of knowledge about this space and about the community," Aravich said. "The fact that I now not only get to use the sports marketing brain, but I also get to push prerogatives and narratives of disability stories that will hopefully reflect more in society, that is so purpose driven now."
Dual-sport athlete Dani Aravich competed at Tokyo 2020 and Beijing 2022 six months apart.
Paralympic quest No.3: Chasing winters – and medals
Aravich hasn't made it back to the traditional office job. She has, however, narrowed her training down to Para Nordic skiing over the last two seasons to increase the chances of winning medals at Milano Cortina 2026 and French Alps 2030.
"It was people from our ski team who made me sit down and really think about what I wanted," Aravich said. "The way my coach phrased it to me was, 'When you're 70 years old and you're sitting on your back patio and you're telling your grandkids about your athletic career, are you going to tell them how many Games you went to or how many medals you won?' And I was like, 'Oh, that's a good question'."
Having to race against girls who “ski to school”, cross-country and biathlon late bloomer Aravich decided to dedicate four years to the Para sports to improve her podium potential.
While she cannot promise that she is out of summer sports forever – the home Games at LA28 are a particularly tempting prospect – for now, Aravich is keeping her sights set on snowy winter trails and her feet firmly strapped into her ski boots.
Culxtured: A mission bigger than sport
December 2024 marks the five-year anniversary since Aravich first stepped on Nordic skis. The sport has taken centre stage in her life since then, but that is not to say that the two-time Paralympian does not find time to pursue her other passions as well.
Those included working as a content creator for the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee during the 2024 Paralympic Games – a job that had Aravich trying out goalball and doing photoshoots with Paralympic champions – and most recently, creating a new media platform to talk about Para sports.
Aravich launched Culxtured on 8 October with three other USA athletes: three-time Paralympic champion in Para snowboard Brenna Huckaby, Paralympic champion in wheelchair basketball Ryan Neiswender, and four-time Paralympic medallist in wheelchair rugby Chuck Aoki.
The idea for Culxtured came from the "Paralympic Round Up" videos that Aravich was posting on her own social media accounts in the lead up to Paris 2024. The videos gave information about upcoming qualifier events and insights into the strategies of different Para sports.
Huckaby reached out to compliment the fellow winter sports athletes on these videos and ask how she might get involved.
"She was just like, 'I think we need to start something. We need to be sure that we are the ones who can control what is said about us in the media'," Aravich said. "So often the stories get written by non-disabled folks and (Para athletes) get portrayed as 'they overcame their disability', 'they've come back from injury'. It always ties back to the disability or the traumatic event being the highlight of the story when most often the Paralympic athletes want the athletics to be the highlight of their story."
Neiswender reached out a week after this conversation and the trio later also pulled Aoki into the fold.
Culxtured launched as a social media platform and website, but there are plans to expand its scope over the next months. Aside from explainer videos on Para sports and information about upcoming competitions, the four co-founders want to offer personal branding workshops to Para athletes to help them become more marketable to sponsors. Podcasts and documentaries are also part of their long-term vision.
"We really wanted to create this space together where we could celebrate athlete achievements but also help athletes tell their own stories," Aravich said. "We want the narrative to always come from the disabled narrative rather than someone else feeling disability because I think that's where the story can get misconstrued."
"At the end of all this, these are athletes first and foremost before we even consider the storyline or the narrative of the disability or the injury or any of that. Athlete first, always," Dani Aravich to Olympics.com
Culxtured is a project that fills Aravich – who has no shortage of memorable jobs to choose from – with a great sense of purpose. It is the dream job she never have applied for, but created instead.
"I would like to be remembered in this space as someone who pushed the envelope and didn't settle for the way things were or the way things have been done, but being a very forward-thinking individual to make Para sports mainstream," she said. "This is what my focus and prerogative is."