Attitude, strength favor Masters
Sochi Games’ Nordic skiing medalist aiming for biathlon medal in Pyeongchang
Oksana Masters’ fall on the ice came at one of the worst possible moments.
Nearly two weeks before the Paralympics, Masters slipped on ice in Bozeman, Mont., where she’s been training since November. She dislocated her right elbow, and the injury kept her off snow for nearly a week.
But instead of bemoaning the situation, Masters tried to keep things in perspective. “Obviously this situation and timing isn’t ideal, and I look at it as a setback to a bigger goal,” she wrote on Instagram. “This shows that I am human and things happen out of our control when we least expect it — what I can control is my attitude and my determination to be stronger, go faster and be the best I can be for myself and Team USA.”
Masters’ optimism and positive attitude are evident if you spend any time talking with her.
The 28-year-old was born in Ukraine with significant birth defects to her limbs as a result of the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl. After living in orphanages, she was adopted at age 7 by an American mother, Gay Masters.
Oksana would have both legs amputated, her left at age 9 and the right at 14.
She initially took up rowing as a teenager and made her first Paralympic team in 2012.
The fitness she had developed in rowing translated well to Nordic skiing. She made the 2014 Paralympic team as an inexperienced skier and won silver and bronze in Sochi.
Since then Masters has become one of the top Nordic skiers in the world. Her boyfriend, Aaron Pike, who’s also a Nordic skier on the national team, says watching her progression has been incredible.
“It’s crazy to watch her,” Pike said last fall at the U.S. Olympic Committee’s media summit. “If you look at her results and put them next to the men’s, a lot of times she’d probably be finishing 10th out of 30 guys. She’s awesome. She’s definitely found her sport.”
At a World Cup in Canmore, Alberta, in January, Masters won gold in all three of her biathlon events. She credits spending more time shooting indoors as one of the reasons she’s improved.
She describes shooting as becoming as natural as grabbing her keys on the way out the door.
“That’s the big thing — with shooting is it’s all about muscle memory,” she said in a phone interview in January. “You can’t really fake it. With cross country skiing, if you’re really strong and an in-shape person, you can be new to the sport, you can kind of muscle your way through something.
“But you can’t really do that with bi- athlon. You have to put the time into it, you usually need a solid year or two years to have that confidence in yourself.”
It’s that confidence that in part makes Masters a medal contender in six individual events in cross country and biathlon in Pyeongchang if she is healthy.
But it’s not necessarily the medals that drive her.
“I think the minute you start looking at the results … the minute you take your eye off the target, there’s always that person behind you that’s training and wants it more than you,” she said. “I don’t want that to be the case.”