Oksana Masters: ‘Sports really taught me it was okay to take my legs off in front of people and to still be powerful’

She now has 19 Paralympic medals to her name across four Summer and Winter Games disciplines – more than most athletes could even dream of.

Yet Team USA athlete Oksana Masters says she still has “so many things” motivating her ahead of the Paralympic Games – including defending the two para-cycling gold medals that she earned in Tokyo. And on Thursday, she achieved just that, winning her second gold medal of the Paris Games in the H5 road race after defending her H4-5 time trial title on Wednesday.

“My dream is to ignite the passion with of cycling and what’s possible on the bike with hand cycling, and grow the women’s field on the bike, especially in the USA. I would love to be there in LA,” she said post race, with eyes on the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games.

“I would love to be finishing that finish line along with Team USA athletes, seeing that legacy going on for the future,” she added.

This year, Masters has the opportunity to bring her medal total up to 20: she takes part in the mixed team relay H1-5 on Saturday.

Sport, she tells CNN Sport’s Coy Wire, sent her on a “journey of self-discovery and love.”

Born in Ukraine with significant birth defects believed to be linked to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster – six toes, webbed fingers, no thumbs and legs that were missing weight-bearing bones – Masters spent the first seven years of her life between orphanages before her American mother, Gay Masters, adopted her.

After moving to the US, Masters’ legs were amputated at the ages of nine and 14.

Since winning her first Paralympic medal in rowing at London 2012, the talented multi-disciplined athlete has amassed a total of 17 medals – seven of them gold – in six different editions of the Games in rowing, cross-country skiing, biathlon and cycling.

Immersing herself in these sporting disciplines slowly helped her accept herself.

“That was the journey for me to love myself and accept myself and see my body as powerful and strong. It was not an overnight journey,” she tells CNN.

“Sports really taught me how it was okay to take my legs off in front of people and to still be powerful and feel powerful and use my body in ways and see it in this unique way that I know I feel,” she said.

“I want people to see how I feel about it and not [let] society – just because they don’t know it and are uncomfortable about it – determine how I feel.”

Masters is as resilient as she is talented – after a back injury forced her to retire from rowing following the London Paralympics, she then tried her hand at cross-country skiing, bagging a silver and bronze at the Sochi 2014 Winter Games.

Almost 10 years later, her cycling performance in Tokyo, where she won two gold medals, came less than a year after recovering from leg surgery.

“I came to America with so many scars, and the story was written for me. And I let them define me. I let those memories be what those memories were. But that’s not what defines you,” she tells CNN Sport.

She adds: “It’s not what you’ve been through. It’s what you choose to do and how you move forward and all the things you have done. And the scars are just there to remember how strong [you] are. Whether it’s a scar you got from climbing a tree, or whether it’s a scar that you didn’t ask for, it is – it’s a symbol of power and strength.”

This year, Masters will participate in para cycling races. The 35-year-old athlete said she is always chasing that perfect race, “where it doesn’t matter where I finish on the podium, before I know the result.

“I think a lot of athletes are chasing that perfect race. And, you know, it’s not about the gold medal [that is] what makes a perfect race,” she adds.

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