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

She already has 17 Paralympic medals to her name across four summer and winter disciplines – more than most athletes could even dream of.

She already has 17 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. 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.