Oksana Masters survived Chernobyl radiation and rape, witnessed murder as an orphan and endured amputation… now she’s Team USA’s seven-time Paralympic champion

When she lines up in Paris this summer, Team USA paracyclist Oksana Masters can rest assured that she has already overcome challenges far more dangerous than any cycling race can throw at her.

A seven-time Paralympic champion and 17-time medalist in a range of sports at both the summer and winter Games, Masters heads to the French capital with a backstory that few other athletes can match when it comes to trauma, survival and willpower.

From the very beginning of her life, the odds were stacked against her in the most cruel and devastating ways. Born in Khmelnitsky, Ukraine, three years after the Chernobyl disaster, Oksana was forced to grow up with physical disabilities caused by radiation poisoning from the city’s infamous nuclear reactor.

With webbed fingers on each hand, no thumbs, a left leg six inches shorter than her right, and both without weight-bearing bones, she faced an uphill battle from the moment she first saw the world. Such an uphill battle, in fact, that the Khmelnitsky girl was given up for adoption by biological parents who were unable to provide the care she so desperately needed.

At the age of seven, she was adopted by Gay Masters, a single American speech therapist, who brought her to the US after a tough two-year struggle.

But before she was rescued by Masters, Oksana endured the kind of horror that no child should ever have to experience in the orphanage; where she was often beaten, raped – sometimes more than once a day – and witnessed the murder of another orphaned girl, her best friend Lainey.

After escaping the hell of her traumatic childhood in Ukraine, her life took another turn for the worse at the age of 14 when she suffered a double amputation, which left both her legs too painful and unable to support her weight. wear.

Twenty years later, Masters, now 34, can boast a legacy as one of the most decorated Paralympians in American history. Over the past ten years she has won seventeen medals in cross-country skiing, biathlon, rowing and paracycling, of which she will participate again this summer at the Paris Games.

And as she prepares for her latest attempt at glory, Masters has learned not to let the pain of her childhood negatively affect her emotions.

“I was such an angry racer,” she says of her initial struggles in the sport. ‘I always raced so hard and gave it my all. That came from the childhood experiences I had.

“But what I’m learning through therapy is that it’s not sustainable for me.”

In recent years, Masters has turned to a sports therapist to help her not associate the starting line of races with trauma and anger. “It’s just another workout I have to do,” she adds.

The multi-sport Paralympian credits part of letting go of this anger, this anger at what she has had to overcome in her life, to writing her book – ‘The Hard Parts’ – in which she documents her tumultuous upbringing. It has allowed her to forgive her birth parents deep down after understanding the factors that led to the abandonment.

“When I was writing, it was so therapeutic,” she recalls. “But then I also looked back and saw that I was such an angry person – and that there are so many things I have no control over. I really had to learn that first.

“My mother who adopted me was so supportive. She was the one who always spoke positively about my birth family and said, “You weren’t rejected, they probably wanted to keep you, but they couldn’t keep you” with all the physical things I had and the things I would do. need.

“I think it was the process of writing and reading through my mother’s journey about the adoption process, [as well as] my own memories and looking back on them.

“I was still living in that childhood lens, but now I take a step back and see how the whole story works.”

The 2022 Beijing Paralympic Games proved to be the most fruitful of Oksana’s illustrious career to date, with two gold medals in biathlon and one in cross-country skiing, along with three silver medals in the former and one in the latter.

After that success, she took it one step further by reconnecting with her biological family and making up for lost time. Now she emphasizes that Masters will not only represent the US in Paris.

“Since Beijing I have been in contact with part of my biological family, so it is no longer about winning a gold medal. I am at the start as a representative of Ukraine.

“If I’m lucky enough to get on stage, I’ll donate my proceeds and my winnings to an organization, just like I did in Beijing. And so I make it something more than just standing at the start.’

To further cement her uniquely difficult story, Masters was only able to watch from America as her native country was attacked by Russia in 2022, a war that continues to this day.

Despite the unhappy memories of her childhood in Ukraine, the news that members of her biological family had been killed as a result of that conflict was still difficult to process. ‘It is a challenge. I’m trying to navigate through it and still find a way to talk about it and not cry, because a lot of people who know my story know that there’s something bad in it too, but I’m so proud to be Ukrainian. she insists.

“The fact that there are some bad eggs that have done me wrong does not represent my country.

‘It’s so important to remember where you come from, and my dream is to meet my biological family. I want to meet them and thank you, because now that I’m an adult, I know they didn’t have all the resources to give me what I needed.

“I left Ukraine without a voice, now I’m going to Paris as an athlete for Team USA, where I represent Ukraine and the Ukrainian people and have a voice.”

When asked if each start line and finish line have greater importance in the wake of the war between Ukraine and Russia, she added: “That is exactly the same goal for me as in Beijing, on that start line. The same thing happens in Paris.

“When you just said that, I got goosebumps, because I’m so proud to be Ukrainian. What people don’t understand in the news right now is that the attacks taking place in Ukraine are still just as strong, two years from now. It’s not slowing down.’

Masters will make the trip to Paris in the coming months in the hope of expanding its vast medal collection and further cementing one of the most inspiring sporting stories in recent history.

But after enough battles through the kind of damaging setbacks that led most of it to the point of no return, that moving story has already been sealed.

“I don’t see myself as a role model, I just see myself as a physical example and being seen and hopefully empowering young girls,” she admits. “Whether it allows them to realize and pursue their dream, or whether it’s about doing business at school.

“Yes, I think I am a role model in the sense of never giving up and fighting for your place as a woman and knowing that you deserve to be here and that you are worth something – we all do that.

“I’m very honored when people see that as a role model, it’s more that I just want to keep breaking down the walls for the young girls and women behind me.”