Oksana Masters: Paralympic champion on Chernobyl, Tokyo 2020 and upbringing in Ukraine
Standing on a podium by Russia's Black Sea coast, Oksana Masters felt a surge of pride as the anthems played. It wasn't her first Paralympic medal, but this one was extra special.
She had just won cross country skiing silver at the Sochi Winter Games of 2014. As she held her prize, the flag of neighbouring Ukraine was raised for the winner, Lyudmila Pavlenko. Masters was herself born in Ukraine in 1989, three years after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. She was born with severe physical defects caused by exposure to radiation.
In Sochi she was competing for the USA, the country where she grew up, an adopted child raised by a single mother. Returning to somewhere so close to the country of her birth had been a big motivation for qualifying to compete in Russia.
"It was kind of coming full circle," she says. "It wasn't my gold-medal moment, but it sure felt like it."
Oksana's moment would come. Four years later, two of the five medals she won at Pyeongchang 2018 were gold. And this year she will be competing on the Paralympic stage for a fifth time - at the summer Games of Tokyo 2020.
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