Masters has become a global figurehead for Paralympic sport. She won medals in summer and winter sports in rowing, biathlon, cross-country skiing and cycling. This week, she won silver and gold twice in the snow in China, and she’s not done yet.
In China, she glides through the snow with the yellow-blue colors of the Ukrainian flag on her wrist. It hurts that her homeland, three decades after she herself suffered the consequences of the worst nuclear disaster in history, is once again in ruins.
She’s not the only Ukrainian native to try to turn the anger and grief over the Russian invasion into Paralympic success. It was uncertain for a while whether the Paralympians from Ukraine could travel to China. The team arrived a day before the opening ceremony and immediately topped the medal table after the opening day with seven medals in biathlon, three of which were gold. The country is now in second place, behind China.
Chernobyl baby
The war often reminds Masters of her own childhood. The parabiathlete was born Oksana Alexandrovna Bondarchuk 33 years ago in Ukraine. As a ‘Chernobyl baby’ she was born with numerous abnormalities. Due to the high levels of radiation after the 1986 nuclear disaster, she was born with fused fingers without thumbs, deformed legs and six toes on each foot. She actually liked that last one. “Six toes, that was the coolest thing on earth.”
After her birth, she was given up for adoption by her parents. For the first seven and a half years of her life, she grew up in the terrible system of Ukrainian orphanages, where she was regularly starved and physically and mentally abused. She can still live on little food for days.
Her life changed when Gay Masters, a single American woman, wanted to adopt a baby from the orphanage. She actually came for a younger child, but changed her mind when she got a black and white photo of young Oksana. She saw a special sparkle in the girl’s eyes and knew that this must be her daughter.
Chance of a better life
It took another two years before Oksana could go to America. With a fresh passport and a new surname, she got the chance for a better life, if only because of the medical care. As she got older, her legs couldn’t handle her weight anymore. Her left leg was amputated above the knee when she was nine, and her right leg followed five years later. Operations on her hands also followed. Surgeons gave her a thumb function to her hands so she could do more.
Just before she lost her right leg, Masters started rowing at the urging of her adoptive mother. Sports became an outlet for coping with her traumatic childhood.
The para-rower worked his way up to the top of the world and won her first important medal in the boat at the Paralympics in London in 2012. She then switched to cross-country skiing and biathlon with which she had success in Sochi in 2014 and Pyeongchang in 2018. Last summer she won two gold medals on the bicycle in Tokyo. Masters captured a total of thirteen Paralympic medals.
On her Instagram profile, the American quotes a well-known statement from fashion designer Coco Chanel. “To be irreplaceable, you must always be different from others.” She posed nude for ESPN magazine in 2012. In the photo, Masters, photographed from the back, is sitting on a jetty next to her rowing boat, legs crossed, without a prosthesis. Birds tattooed in ink fly to her back on her right side.
Tumor in leg
Getting tattoos has become a way for Masters to also manage the scars on her soul and in her skin. The many operations left its mark on her body. A hundred days before the Paralympic Games in Tokyo, another scar appeared. A tumor was discovered in her leg, forcing her to go under the knife again. She rehabilitated, had to get used to her prostheses again and won two gold medals.
Masters is at the start in Beijing with mixed feelings. She hopes that her achievements can contribute something to the situation in her native country. From China she is calling on people to donate to the No Child Forgotten fund, which helps children with disabilities in Ukraine. ‘I know what it’s like to be a child with a disability in a country where there is almost no medical care, especially now in a war. I want to make sure that no child feels forgotten.’