The Paris Paralympics noticed Staff USA Paracycling on the rostrum in a number of occasions, from Elouan Gardon – the youngest member of Staff USA Paracycling at this summer season’s Paralympics – snagging the U.S.’s first paracycling medal of the Video games to Samantha Bosco successful gold within the girls’s particular person time trial C4.
Along with these successes, one of the vital well-known members of Staff USA Paracycling on the Paris Paralympics this summer season, 35-year-old Oksana Masters, continued to make a reputation for herself within the historical past books by successful gold in each the girls’s street race H5 and ladies’s time trial H4-5, making her a 19-time Paralympic medalist.
Masters’ background isn’t a typical one for an elite athlete, and but she continues to blaze new paths seemingly with each race she competes in.
Listed below are 19 belongings you didn’t learn about 19-time Paralympic medalist Oksana Masters.
19 Issues You Did not Know About Oksana Masters
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- Masters was born in 1989 in Ukraine with start defects attributable to radiation poisoning from the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown in spring 1986.
- Masters spent seven-and-a-half years in an orphanage in Ukraine the place she endured, in her phrases, horrible abuse earlier than being adopted by a single mom and shifting to Buffalo, New York after which Louisville, Kentucky.
- She initially had six toes on every foot, webbed fingers, no thumbs, and was lacking weight-bearing bones in her legs. After a number of surgical procedures within the U.S., her legs had been amputated above the knee when she was 14 years outdated.
- Masters initially tried adaptive rowing as a 13-year-old – at her mom’s urging, in response to Masters – and that’s what sparked Masters’ lengthy and adorned profession in sports activities as we all know it right now.
- Masters instantly liked rowing, saying that it introduced a “new sense of freedom and management” for her. She set her eyes on the London 2012 Paralympics together with her rowing accomplice, Rob Jones, and collectively they gained bronze for Staff USA within the trunk and arms double skulls, blended rowing class.
- Masters needed to increase her athletic prowess past rowing, and took to adaptive snowboarding after the 2012 Paralympics, saying that the transition from adaptive rowing to snowboarding was “straightforward as a result of each sports activities goal the identical muscle teams.
- Moreover, Masters completed fourth within the trunk and arms blended double sculls occasion on the 2013 World Rowing Championships in South Korea. She then secured a third-place end in the identical occasion on the World Cup II in Eton, Nice Britain, later that very same yr.
- After solely 14 months of studying easy methods to adaptive ski, Masters certified for Staff USA for the 2014 Sochi Winter Paralympics in all three Nordic cross-country snowboarding occasions and all three biathlon occasions. She took residence a silver medal within the girls’s 12km sitting and a bronze medal within the girls’s 5km sitting Nordic snowboarding occasions.
(Picture credit score: Getty Pictures)
- Masters went on to realize a number of medals in world para-Nordic snowboarding occasions reminiscent of gold medals within the 12km sitting girls, 1km dash sitting girls, 5km dash sitting girls and 6km particular person sitting girls occasions on the 2017 World Championships.
- Masters continued her dominance in para-Nordic snowboarding on the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Paralympics by successful gold medals in each the 1.5km dash traditional sitting and the 5km sitting occasions and a bronze medal within the 12km sitting occasion.
- Masters can also be an completed biathlete – she gained silver medals within the 6km sitting and 12.5km sitting occasions on the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Paralympics.
- Masters suffered a again damage in 2013 and wanted to discover a approach to cross-train whereas she healed, so she turned to handcycling, saying: “After making an attempt it for the primary time, I fell in love with the speeds I may attain that different sports activities couldn’t.”
- She then made a major change in her summer season Paralympic Video games journey by switching to focusing solely available biking for the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics the place she gained gold medals in each the street time trial H4-5 and street race H5 occasions.
- Masters continued to excel in hand biking, successful a gold medal on the 2023 World Championships in Glasgow within the street race H5 occasion.
- Regardless of her newfound love of – and success at – handcycling, Masters continued to pursue para-Nordic snowboarding. On the 2022 Beijing Winter Paralympics, she earned silver medals within the 15km sitting, 1.5km dash sitting and 10km sitting occasions.
- On the 2024 Paris Paralympics, Masters gained two gold medals, one within the girls’s street race H5 and one within the girls’s time trial H4-5.
- When requested if she plans on aiming for the 2028 Los Angeles Paralympics, Masters mentioned: “My dream is to ignite the fervour of biking and present what is feasible in hand biking and develop the ladies’s subject, particularly for Staff USA. I might like to be in L.A. [in 2028].”
- Masters authored a e book in 2023 about her journey from childhood to elite athlete known as “The Arduous Components: A Story of Braveness and Triumph.”
- Along with her leg prosthetics, Masters stands at 5’8” – with out them, her Instagram biography says she stands at roughly 4’0”.
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