03/15/2026
Amazing
Oksana Masters is renowned for her versatility -- excelling in four different sports over eight Paralympics, both summer and winter. As the most decorated American Winter Paralympian in history, she has won 23 medals across 14 years, including four golds at this week's Milano Cortina Games. But what's less known is that her astounding resilience was forged during seven brutal years in Ukrainian orphanages, where she endured starvation, abuse, and unimaginable cruelty as a young child.
Oksana was born in 1989 in Khmelnytskyi, Ukraine, three years after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, with severe radiation-induced birth defects: her fingers were webbed and she had no thumbs, she had a partial stomach and only one kidney, her legs were drastically different lengths, and neither leg had the bones needed to bear weight.
Her birth parents abandoned her. She spent the next seven years in orphanages where she was frequently beaten and sexually abused. The upstairs of one orphanage was run as a brothel. She was five when she started being taken up there and r***d by men, sometimes more than once a day.
The children were always hungry. Some nights there was no food at all, other nights just a cup of soup or a piece of bread. Her best friend, a girl named Lainey, was her protector -- "she was my family, she taught me what love is and what safety feels like."
One night, the two girls snuck out to find food. Oksana slipped and hit a chair. Men heard the noise and found Lainey. Oksana managed to hide but heard her friend get hit over and over -- Lainey died from the beating she received that night.
"All I wanted was to die," Oksana has said of that time of her life, "but I also wanted a mom. That ounce of hope was there and that's just what I held on to."
Thousands of miles away, a single American speech pathologist named Gay Masters was shown a grainy black-and-white photograph of a little girl standing in front of a table with an Easter bunny on it. "Something in her eyes just connected," Gay said later. "When I saw her picture, I just knew she was my daughter."
Friends warned her not to adopt an older child with so many physical challenges. She spent two years fighting through corruption and bureaucracy to bring Oksana home.
The whole time, at the orphanage, Oksana kept Gay's passport photo by her bedside table. "I looked at her picture every single day for the two years that she was fighting to get me," she has said. "I memorized that picture. I memorized those eyes."
When Gay finally arrived to bring her home, 7-year-old Oksana pulled the photograph from her bedside table. "I know who you are," she said. "You are my mother."
Years later, at the Laureus World Sports Awards, Oksana thanked Gay publicly: "Mom, thank you for saving me, for giving me a second opportunity at life." The camera showed Gay shaking her head. "I didn't save her," she told the Courier Journal. "She would have saved herself. That kid is a survivor."
In America, Oksana had both legs amputated above the knee -- her left at age nine, her right at age 14 -- as they became too painful to support her weight. Surgeons reconstructed her hands, reshaping her fingers to give her functional thumbs.
Oksana didn't know the word "happy" when she arrived in the United States. "My mom had to teach me what the word happy meant when I told her what these weird feelings were," she has said. "I just didn't know how to put a word to it."
At 13, she discovered adaptive rowing, and it changed everything. "It was my safe place to process my anger," she has said. "When you pull, you feel the force of the water on the oars; that was my way to scream and let everything out. But then when the oar comes out of the water, I feel that instant release."
She threw herself into competition with an intensity forged by everything she had survived. "I was such an angry racer," she has admitted. "That came from the childhood experience that I had."
That angry racer became one of the most versatile and dominant Paralympians the United States has ever produced. She won a bronze medal in rowing at the 2012 London Games -- the first ever U.S. medal in that event. A back injury forced her out of rowing and into cross-country skiing and para-cycling, and she excelled at both.
She won five medals at the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang, seven at the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing, and back-to-back gold medals in para-cycling at the 2020 Tokyo and 2024 Paris Summer Games.
Four different sports. Eight Paralympics. Summer and winter. Twenty-three medals across 14 years. Her final race of the Games -- the 20km cross-country -- will take place on the Paralympics' closing day on Sunday.
"My mom is my number one reason why I'm here and why I keep pushing myself, and trying to prove to myself what's truly possible, and prove to society what's truly possible," she says. Now 36, Oksana is engaged to fellow Paralympian Aaron Pike and hopes to become a mother herself one day.
She has also spoken openly about why she chose to share the darkest parts of her childhood publicly: "I hope it shines a light, that people acknowledge and change it because this isn't something that's unique to Ukraine; this happens in foster care all over the world, this happens in homes."
When asked whether she considers herself a role model, Oksana reflects: "I just see myself as being a physical example and being seen and hopefully empowering young girls. I am a role model in the sense of just never giving up and as a female fighting for your place and knowing you deserve to be here and you have worth. We all do."
Above all, though, Oksana wants her legacy to be measured in something other than medals: "I'm very honored if people consider that as a role model. It's more that I just want to continue to break down the walls for the young girls and women behind me."
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Oksana Masters has told her incredible life story in a powerful memoir: "The Hard Parts: A Memoir of Courage and Triumph" at https://bookshop.org/a/8011/9781982185510 (Bookshop) and https://amzn.to/416BXUY (Amazon)
For children's books starring Mighty Girls with disabilities of all varieties, visit our blog post "Many Ways To Be Mighty: 35 Books Starring Mighty Girls with Disabilities" at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=12992
For several inspiring books about Mighty Girls who pursue their dreams after amputations, we recommend "Rescue and Jessica" for ages 5 to 9 (https://www.amightygirl.com/rescue-and-jessica), “The Running Dream” for ages 12 and up (https://www.amightygirl.com/the-running-dream), and “A Time To Dance” for ages 13 and up (https://www.amightygirl.com/a-time-to-dance)
For three excellent books about girls and women breaking athletic records throughout history, check out "Girls With Guts!" for ages 6 to 9 (https://www.amightygirl.com/girls-with-guts), "We Got Game! 35 Female Athletes Who Changed The World" for ages 8 and up (https://www.amightygirl.com/we-got-game), and "Women in Sports: 50 Fearless Athletes Who Played to Win" for ages 9 and up (https://www.amightygirl.com/women-in-sports)
For books that celebrate adoptive families, visit our blog post "Born in My Heart: 20 Mighty Girl Books for National Adoption Day" at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=5116
