When she hits the starting line 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.
Masters, a seven-time Paralympic champion and 17-time medalist in a variety of sports at the Summer and Winter Games, heads to the French capital with a backstory that few athletes can rival in terms of trauma, survival and willpower.
From the beginning of his life, the odds were against him in the most cruel and devastating way. Born in Khmelnitsky, Ukraine, three years after the Chernobyl disaster, Oksana was forced to grow up with physical defects induced 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 the right, and both devoid of weight-bearing bones, he faced an uphill battle the moment he first saw the world. In fact, it was such an uphill battle that Khmelnitsky’s little girl was put up for adoption by biological parents incapable of providing the care she so desperately needed.
Oksana Masters travels to Paris for the Paralympic Games knowing that she has overcome much more dangerous challenges
Seven-time Paralympic champion Masters hopes to expand her collection in France
The sports center, which now competes in paracycling, suffers a double amputation
Masters was born in Ukraine with physical defects three years after the Chernobyl disaster
After witnessing horrific scenes in a Ukrainian orphanage, having been abandoned by her biological parents, she was adopted at the age of seven by the American Gay Masters.
At the age of seven she was adopted by Gay Masters, a single American speech therapist who brought her to the United States after an arduous two-year struggle.
However, before being rescued by Masters, Oksana endured the kind of horror that no child should experience in the orphanage; where she was frequently beaten, raped (sometimes more than once a day), and witnessed the murder of another orphan girl, her best friend Lainey.
After escaping the hell of his traumatic childhood in Ukraine, at the age of 14 life had taken another perverse turn when he suffered a double amputation, as a result of both legs becoming too painful and unable to support his weight.
Two decades later, Masters, now 34, has the legacy of being one of the most decorated Paralympic athletes in United States history. In the last 10 years he has won 17 medals in cross-country skiing, biathlon, rowing and paracycling; the latter will compete again at the Paris Games this summer.
And as he prepares for his last chance at glory, Masters has learned not to let the pain of his childhood influence his emotions in a negative way.
“I was a very angry runner,” she says of her initial difficulties in the sport. ‘I always ran really hard and just threw everything at it. That came from the childhood experience 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 resist associating the starting line of racing with trauma and anger. “It’s another exercise I have to do,” she adds.
Two decades after losing both legs, Masters stands as a great Paralympic figure
He heads to Paris with a clear mind after leaving the anger of his childhood behind.
Part of letting go of this fury, this rage at what she has had to overcome in her life, the multi-sport Paralympic athlete attributes to writing her book, ‘The Hard Parts’, in which she documents her tumultuous upbringing. She has allowed him to deeply forgive her biological parents after understanding the factors that led to her abandonment.
“When I was on the writing path, it was very therapeutic,” he recalls. “But then I also looked back and saw that I was a very angry person and that there are so many things that are out of my control.” I really had to learn that first.
‘My mother, who adopted me, supported me a lot. She was the one who always spoke positively about my birth family and she would say “you weren’t rejected, they probably wanted to keep you but couldn’t keep you” with all the physical things she had and the things she would do. need.
‘I think it was the process of writing and reading about my mother’s journey through the adoption process, [as well as] my own memories and reflect on them.
“I was still living in that childhood lens, but now I’m taking a step back and seeing how the whole story fits together.”
The Beijing 2022 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, as well as three silvers in the former and one in the latter.
After that success, he took it a step further by reconnecting with his biological family and making up for lost time. Now, she insists, Masters will not only represent the United States in Paris.
Masters says foster mom Gay played a big role in her reconnecting with her family
“I’m in communication with part of my biological family from Beijing, so now it’s no longer about winning a gold medal, I’m on the starting line representing Ukraine.
‘If I am lucky enough to get on the podium, I will donate my winnings and winnings to an organization, just like I did in Beijing. And that’s how I make this about more than just being on the starting line.”
To add to his exceptionally difficult history, Masters was only able to watch from the United States when his home country was attacked by Russia in 2022, a war that continues today.
Despite unhappy memories of her childhood in Ukraine, the news that members of her biological family were killed as a result of that conflict was still difficult to process. ‘It’s challenging. I’m trying to navigate it and still find a way to talk about it and not cry, because a lot of people who know my story know that something bad happened too, but I’m very proud to be Ukrainian. ‘, he insists.
‘The fact that there are some bad eggs who treated me badly does not represent my country.
‘It is very important to remember where you come from and my dream is to meet my biological family. I want to meet them and say thank you because now as an adult I know that they did not 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 on Team USA, representing Ukraine and the Ukrainian people and having a voice.”
Asked if each start and finish line was of greater importance after the Ukraine-Russia war, he added: “That’s exactly the same goal for me as in Beijing, on that start line.” The same will happen in Paris soon.
He now hopes to further cement his inspiring sporting history by adding Morem Edals to his collection in the French capital.
“When you just said that I got goosebumps, because I’m very proud to be Ukrainian. What people don’t understand in the news right now is that the attacks that are happening in Ukraine are still just as strong, and This has been two years. It is not slowing down.”
Masters will travel to Paris in the coming months with high hopes of adding to his vast medal collection and further cementing one of the most inspiring sporting stories in recent times.
Although after battling the kind of adversity damaging enough to push most to the point of no return, that heartwarming story is now 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’s empowering them so they can achieve and go after their dream, or whether it’s doing business at school.
“I guess so, I’m a role model in the sense of never giving up and, as a woman, fighting for your place and knowing that you deserve to be here and that you’re worth it; we all are.”
“I feel very honored if people consider him a role model, in fact, I simply want to continue breaking down the walls for the young girls and women behind me.”