Oksana Masters

Oksana Masters was born in Khmelnytskyi, Ukraine, three years after the Chernobyl disaster, with defects thought to have been caused by radiation: six toes on each foot, webbed fingers with no thumbs, one leg shorter than the other, and legs missing the bones needed to bear weight. Her parents gave her up and she spent her early childhood in a series of orphanages, where she was underfed and, she has said, abused.

Gay Masters, an American speech therapist, spent two years fighting through the adoption process and brought her to the United States in 1997, when she was seven. Her left leg was amputated at nine and her right at 14. Her mother, looking for something that would let her use her upper body, took her to an adaptive rowing club.

She won a bronze medal in rowing at the London Paralympics in 2012. A back injury pushed her out of the boat and onto skis, and she won two cross-country skiing medals at the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, then golds in skiing and biathlon in 2018 and 2022. In between she took up hand cycling and won two golds in Tokyo and two more in Paris.

She has competed at seven Paralympic Games in four sports and holds more Paralympic medals than any other American winter athlete. Her memoir, The Hard Parts, was published in 2023.