Winter Paralympics star revealed birth defects were linked to Chernobyl disaster

With eight Paralympic Games under her belt, Oksana Masters remains Team USA's most decorated disabled athlete of all time.

The 36-year-old's rise to international sporting success was far from easy, however.

Despite being raised in Louisville, Kentucky, until she was seven, Masters had resided in a Ukrainian orphanage.

She'd been placed up for adoption at birth, having been born with six toes. She was also without the main weight-bearing bones in both of her legs, which caused the appearance that her knees had been floating.

Masters had webbed hands, born with five fingers but no thumbs. She was missing several organs, including one of her kidneys. Her teeth had no enamel to them, and she had no right bicep.

She was adopted by a professor at the University at Buffalo in New York state and moved to the US.

Oksana - photographed here in 2014 - competes in several different Paralympic categories (KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV / AFP via Getty Images)

It wasn't until she moved to America that she discovered a number of these ailments could only have been caused by radiation.

Doctors ruled, therefore, that her defects were likely caused by her birth mother having lived close to Chernobyl in the years after reactor no.4 of the Nuclear Power Plant close to Pripyat exploded.

"They linked it to Chernobyl because I was really not that far from there, and the fact that radiation levels continued to rise years after the explosion," she previously told BBC Sport. "It definitely lingered on years later to when I was born.

"There was also a power plant in the village of the orphanage that would go off frequently. Whenever the radiation was high there was this one cop who would drive round and tell us to board up the windows and doors, not to go out."

She added: "I didn't know I was different until I came to America. It was only then I realised that everything I had experienced was not normal."

Doctors ruled that Masters' ailments had been caused by her mother's proximity to the Chernobyl site (Wojtek Laski/Getty Images)

At the age of nine, she underwent surgery that would remove her impaired left leg, becoming a double amputee by 10.

In 2002, she underwent multiple surgeries on her hands.

Shortly after, Masters took up adaptive rowing, picking up her first Paralympic medal, a bronze, in 2012 after being partnered up with Rob Jons in the mixed double skulls.

She went on to emphasise: "I don't want to say I was a product of it [the Chernobyl disaster] but, out of something horrific, it's about how you can see the potential and possibilities - like becoming an athlete - instead of dwelling on it."

By 2014, she'd switched to cross-country skiing. Masters won bronze and silver in this category in Sochi, Russia in 2014, and her first gold four years later in PyeongChang, South Korea.

Masters won several gold medals this year (Tom Weller/Getty Images)

In 2022, she bagged her first Paralympic gold medal in biathlon in Beijing, also having begun cycling by this point in her career.

Ahead of this year's tournament, Masters competing across several different sporting arenas saw her viewed as a major threat.

Not that this ever went to her head, however, and last week (7 Mar), on the first day of Para biathlon, she cooly defended her women's sprint sitting title.

Masters subsequently stormed to victory in the Para cross-country skiing women's 10km sitting interval start yesterday (11 Mar), earning her 22nd Paralympic medal.

Speaking to press, she later gushed: "The competitor in me wants to keep pushing, [to find out] how many golds can I get from one Games. But at the same time, I am so excited to see the sport growing.

"I have for sure got a lot of unfinished business from Beijing in all the cross-country [events], which is my speciality. I feel it is my focus to upgrade those silvers to golds."