Flags, cowbells and poster boards filled Main Street on Friday as Park City welcomed home athletes from the Milano Cortina Winter Games. The Olympic and Paralympic Homecoming Parade, organized by the Youth Sports Alliance, has been held every four years since 2006, bringing together current Olympia ns and Paralympians alongside athletes from past Games who now call Utah home. This year, that group included 91 athletes who competed in Games spanning from 1960 through the 2026 Milano Cortina Games.  Park City’s Olympic and Paralympic Homecoming Parade brought together athletes from the 1960 Games through 2026, highlighting a multi-generational legacy shaped by local programs and community support. Credit: Jonathan Herrera/Park Record “It’s really just a day to celebrate the Olympic heritage and welcome home the current Olympians and Paralympians,” Youth Sports Alliance Executive Director Emily Fisher said. “I don’t know many communities that can pull together 100 Olympians and Paralympians.” The parade was led by the grand marshals, lugers Ashley Farquharson and Matt Greiner, speedskater Casey Dawson and ski jumpers Josie Johnson and Paige Jones — all five of them athletes who had come up through local programs and products of the system that filled the street behind them as cars packed with local athletes and members of the youth sports alliance’s seven member clubs danced down the street behind them. Members of the Figure Skating Club of Park City joined the homecoming parade, with young skaters representing the local programs that feed into the town’s Olympic pipeline. Credit: Jonathan Herrera/Park Record The Wasatch Luge Club walked alongside athletes in USA luge coats. Park City Speedskating Club athletes followed, mixed in with Olympians like Eric Heiden and Derek Parra. The Park City Figure Skating Club danced down Main Street with young skaters landing single axels in their sneakers.  Wasatch Freestyle athletes, Winter Sports School students and kids from teams across Park City Ski and Snowboard flooded the street in a blanket of American flags, with coaches riding alongside them on unicycles and in vintage ski gear. Viewers lined the bridge and packed the base of Main Street, eagerly hanging off streetlights and upper level balconies to watch the almost 100 athletes gather and sign autographs after the parade.  Crowds packed Main Street, the Town Lift plaza and surrounding sidewalks as residents and visitors gathered to celebrate Park City’s Olympians and Paralympians during the homecoming parade. Credit: Jonathan Herrera/Park Record “This kind of celebration does not happen everywhere,” said Fisher. “Many of the athletes standing on this stage once stood exactly where you stand today.” Kids in hats peppered with signatures from past parades compared autographs and mapped out their next stops. Park City resident Kaci Warner said she brought her family to Main Street to share the Olympic spirit with her kids, who, like many others in town, are involved in multiple sports throughout the year. Moments like this, she said, shape their sense of what’s possible. “We love raising these little athletes,” Warner said. “Any exposure they get to this matters.” That Olympic spirit defines growing up in Park City, where pushing the limits of what’s possible lives in our next door neighbors and schoolmates.  Dori Schmalzle watched as her daughter, 2018 Olympic ski jumper Abby Ringquist, walked down Main Street, inspiring the next generation of ski jumpers and girls in sport. Schmalzle said the environment in Park City gives kids access to sports and role models that are hard to find elsewhere. “Here, their friends are ski jumpers, bobsledders, downhill racers,” she said. “You don’t get that everywhere.” Olympic medalists Ashley Farquharson and Casey Dawson speak to a crowd gathered at the bottom of Main Street in Park City on Friday. Credit: Jonathan Herrera/Park Record That same environment is where many of the athletes in the parade began. Speedskater Casey Dawson traces his path back to a Youth Sports Alliance program that introduced him to the sport as a kid. “I wouldn’t be standing here today if it wasn’t for those programs,” he said. “Competing in the Olympics — it was the biggest stage of our lives, but coming back home and sharing this with everyone has been one of the greatest things. With 2034 around the corner, I’m looking forward to a lot of these kids standing up on this stage and sharing these moments as well.” For ski jumper Josie Johnson, she remembered attending the parade as a kid, walking alongside and meeting athletes like Billy Demong, five-time Olympic Nordic combined skier, before she knew ski jumping would be a huge part of her life.  “I remember walking in this parade when I was six,” she said. “I didn’t even ski jump yet, so to walk with him then and to be here now, again, it’s just crazy.” Paralympian Sydney Peterson said returning home with multiple gold medals in para Nordic skiing never felt like an achievement she carried alone. “I was the one carrying it across the finish line,” Peterson said, “but I had so many people, including so many people in this crowd, that supported me and helped me get there.” Kids compared signatures and moved from table to table collecting autographs from Olympians and Paralympians, filling hats and posters with names from multiple generations of athletes. Credit: Jonathan Herrera/Park Record For Mikey O’Hearn, a Paralympic alpine skier and National Ability Center athlete, his first Paralympic Games were the product not only of his grit and dedication to sport, but also of the people and programs that made the sport accessible to him in the first place. “This journey is not just about myself,” he said. “It’s about my community, being empowered by my community.” Coming back to Park City and being recognized at the parade, he said, reinforced that sense of belonging. “It’s so enriching,” he said. “To come from a place as someone with a disability who might not always feel the most capable, to now, leaving my first Games knowing I am capable and performing at 120% — I will never doubt myself again.” If Park City competed as its own nation in the Games, athletes would have finished 14th in the medal standings, tied with Finland and Australia. Leading the group is Paralympian Sydney Peterson, who returns to Park City with three gold medals and a silver in para Nordic skiing followed by athletes Winter Vinecki, Chris Lillis and Connor Curran with a gold in mixed team aerials.  Kate Delson added a gold and silver to Park City Nation in para snowboard. Speedskater Casey Dawson won silver with teammates Ethan Cepuran and Emery Lehman in the team pursuit, while Ashley Farquharson brought home bronze in women’s singles luge.  The post Paralympians, Olympians return home as Park City brings the Games to Main Street appeared first on Park Record. ...read more read less