Winter Paralympics star Oksana Masters enjoyed yet another gold medal triumph in Milan Cortina recently
Paralympics legend Oksana Masters was born with six toes and webbed fingers following the Chornobyl nuclear disaster.
The Team USA icon this weekend claimed gold in the Para biathlon women’s sitting sprint at the Milan Cortina 2026 Paralympic Games. Finishing 16 seconds ahead of second place, it marked her sixth Winter Paralympic gold medal and tenth gold overall, including the Summer Games.
That takes her tally to 15 Winter Games medals and five Summer Games medals, and she has also been a Paralympic champion in Para cross-country skiing and Para-cycling. It makes Masters the most decorated Team USA Winter Paralympian ever.
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But the 36-year-old had to endure a shocking and heartbreaking life as a child before becoming an athletic success. Masters was born in Ukraine, three years after the Chornobyl disaster, with birth defects believed to be related to the accident.
The radiation resulted in her having differing leg lengths, missing weight-bearing shinbones in her calves, webbed fingers with no thumbs and six toes on each foot. She was abandoned by her birth parents and handed to a Ukrainian orphanage.
Masters spent her early childhood in different orphanages, where she was frequently beaten and raped by men. She also had to endure starvation and malnutrition, which led to one incident where her best friend Lainey was murdered.
Her nightmare ended at age seven when she was adopted by Gay Masters, an unmarried American speech therapist with no children, and moved to the USA in 1997 to live near the border with Canada.
There, she had both of her legs amputated above the knee as they became more and more painful and unable to support her weight. She also underwent surgery to modify her fingers on each hand so they could be used as thumbs.
Recalling the harrowing story of her early life, Masters told ESPN: “I was raped every day between the ages of 5 and 7. We were hungry, always hungry. Sometimes we were given a piece of bread, but we often went to bed on an empty stomach.”
She also heard her best friend die from beatings for trying to steal bread, saying: “She was hungry.”
Masters’ nightmare journey to becoming a Paralympics hero is a testament to her resilience, talent and versatility, having tried her hand at everything from dance and figure skating to horseback riding, before falling in love with rowing. She won her first Paralympic medal in 2012 in the double sculls with Rob Jones.
She has competed in every Paralympics since then, earning medals in Para cross-country and Para biathlon in the winter, and Para cycling and Para rowing in the summer.