Oksana Masters has been here before. Not just at the Paralympics — she has been to seven of them — but in this specific, unfamiliar territory of doubt.
Just two days before the opening ceremony of the 2026 Milano Cortina Paralympic Winter Games, the most decorated American Winter Paralympian in history posted a message to her followers that was equal parts admission and defiance. A bone infection had resurfaced in her leg, the same one that had already wiped out her entire 2024–25 winter season. A concussion compounded the setback. Her fitness heading into Italy was uncertain. Her resolve was not.
“I don’t know what kind of skier I’ll be when I race again in a few days,” she wrote. “But I know I’ll be one who fought to get back.”
That sentence, in many ways, is Masters’ entire story.
From Chernobyl to the podium
Masters was born in 1989 in Khmelnytskyi, Ukraine, and spent her early years in orphanages. The effects of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster are widely suspected to have contributed to the birth defects that affected her hands and legs. She was 7 years old when Gay Masters, a professor from Louisville, Kentucky, adopted her and raised her as a single parent.
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At 13, when she took up rowing. The discipline came naturally; the medals followed. She competed at the London 2012 Paralympic Games in rowing, earning a bronze, and has not stopped competing since.
What makes Masters singular is not just her medal count — 19 Paralympic medals across summer and winter sports, in four disciplines — but the breadth of her athletic career. She has competed in Para rowing, Para cycling, Para biathlon and Para cross-country skiing at the Paralympic level, winning gold in all of them. She won the Laureus World Sportsperson of the Year with a Disability award in 2020 and became the first Para athlete to earn a nomination for Best Female Athlete at the ESPYs.
Her Winter Paralympic record stands alone. She holds 14 Winter Paralympic medals,more than any American in history, and in Beijing in 2022 became the first American athlete to win seven medals at a single Paralympic Games.
Milan-Cortina 2026, where she competes in Para cross-country skiing and Para biathlon, marks her eighth Paralympic Games.
A medal chase through adversity
The road to Italy has been anything but smooth. After winning two gold medals at the Paris 2024 Summer Paralympic Games in Para cycling, Masters returned to winter training only to be sidelined by the bone infection. She missed the entirety of the 2024–25 winter season.
Her comeback in 2025–26 was emphatic. She claimed the overall title in the FIS Para Cross-Country World Cup and secured the Big Crystal Globe, the circuit’s top prize, for the season. Then, weeks before the Games, the infection returned.
Despite the setbacks, Masters made the trip to Italy. She is scheduled to compete in six events across Para cross-country skiing and Para biathlon, beginning Saturday. Medal No. 20 is within reach, and so is further history.
Love on the course
Masters will not be racing alone in more ways than one. Her fiance, Aaron Pike, is a fellow Para Nordic skier and the reigning world champion in Para biathlon. The two met in the Paralympic circuit more than a decade ago, and their relationship grew through years of shared competition and mountain gondola rides. Pike proposed on one such gondola, a nod to the moment at the Sochi 2014 Games when they first sensed something deeper developing.
Between them, they carry 39 world championship medals into Milan-Cortina.
What’s at stake
The 2026 Winter Paralympics run through March 15, with Masters’ events spread across the final week of competition. Para biathlon begins Saturday, while Para cross-country skiing runs from Tuesday through March 15.
For American audiences tuning in on USA Network and Peacock, Masters will be the face of Team USA’s Nordic program, a 36-year-old competing in her eighth Games, chasing a 20th medal from a body that has tested her at every turn.
She has never stopped fighting to get back. Milan-Cortina is just the latest example.
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