Paralympic medalist Oksana Masters aims to inspire the next generation of female athletes

Eight-time Paralympic medalists Oksana Masters spoke with FanSided ahead of the Tokyo Paralympic Games.

Oksana Masters is everywhere.

Masters is a Paralympic cycler, rower and cross country skier, who also competes in the nordic biathlon. The eight-time Paralympic medalist, with two gold medals, is no stranger to the spotlight either. The coffee enthusiast is featured in a Visa commercial with a bag of espresso and a coffee machine. She’s been featured in numerous ads for Toyota including a recent one for an initiative that supports Team USA’s Paralympic athletes.

In July, she took her talents to the TBS game show “The Cube,” hosted by former NBA champion and 2008 Olympic gold medalist Dwyane Wade. Masters teamed up with her partner Aaron Pike, who’s also a Team USA Paralympic medalist, and the two were up for a throwing challenge on the series’ sixth episode. Masters called it an “amazing experience” and laughed with FanSided saying, “people will see why I stick to endurance sports” over one where she has to throw a ball. Through the interactions between the three athletes inside “The Cube,” it was clear they could all relate to one another.

“A lot of people don’t realize that Paralympics is just like the Olympics,” Masters said. “The athletes put in equal amounts of sweat as Olympic athletes.”

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Secret’s Just #WatchMe Mural

Raising awareness for a sport in cycling, which she feels is underrepresented, is one of her missions. This, along with supporting youth in sports, females in sports and inspiring girls who may be like her with a prosthetic leg. Among her many appearances in the public eye, there’s one that illustrates her mission to perfection. That is her appearance on a mural representing Team USA in Secret’s “Just #WatchMe” campaign.

Masters can be spotted standings tall on her prosthetic legs in the front-center of a mural where she’s surrounded by Team USA Olympians Ashleigh Johnson, Alex Morgan, Chelsea Wolfe and Chiney Ogwumike. For Masters and many others, this is more than just an eye-capturing backdrop for photo ops for foot traffic roaming around in New York City, Philadelphia and Atlanta.

It’s “something that I wish I had when I was that 14-year-old girl — who was getting into sports. I never saw anyone with prosthetic legs that was an athlete — that was on one mural with Team USA,” Masters said. “I love inspiring the next generation and this is giving the opportunity to represent what is possible.”

If there’s anyone that can show people what is possible, it’s Masters. In 1989, her biological parents gave her up for adoption at birth in the Ukraine. She was born with defects linked to radiation poising from the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Her legs were missing weight-bearing bones, on top of her left leg being six inches short than her right. She was also born with six toes on each foot and five webbed fingers on each hand without thumbs. Although it was a two-year-long adoption process, she was eventually taken in by her adoptive mother, Gay Masters, when she was seven years old after spending her early years bouncing around in three different orphanages.

When Masters received the 2020 Laureus Sportsperson of the Year Award she thanked her mother, and told those in attendance: “Never let society determined what you see when you look in the mirror,” and “never let them determine the preconceived notions of what they think is possible in yourself.”

She further told FanSided that it took her “all of 32 years to not feed into the outside noise” that her physical differences were limitations.

“No one has been out there to show them [that they] can not just do it but thrive,” Masters said. “I had a lot of support but, at the same time, I had to break through my own barriers and walls through society when getting into sports.”

She explained that it was her mother that encouraged her to begin adaptive rowing when she was 13. Her left leg was amputated when she was nine; by the time she was 14 both of her legs were amputated. Through the example her mother set, she carried two traits with her into athletics, helping her thrive in the sports world — “resilience” and “determination.”

Those traits have led to a lucrative athletic career that has her in the spotlight, serving as an example for young girls in her shoes. Through her journey, she hopes to provide support and encouragement. I want to “make it so the next generation of young girls do not have to think these thoughts. All she has to do is look a picture, look at this incredible mural,” Masters said.

Like Secret’s slogan “Just #WatchMe,” she hopes young girls see themselves in that mural amongst the five athletes and tell themselves: “Just watch me, I’m capable of doing anything and everything.”

Oksana Masters is gearing up for Paralympic Games in Tokyo

The Paralympic Games in Tokyo begins on Aug. 24. Not only will Masters be competing during a pandemic with all the procedures and uncertainty, but she’ll also be competing coming off surgery. She underwent an unexpected operation in late spring and has been recovering and training this summer. She’s been able to use that situation to fuel her.

“It’s a happy amount of doubt that keeps me motivated to prove to myself that I can do it. I can overcome it,” Masters said. “Getting a podium result would be great, but it’s the steps in between that actually make you an amazing, incredible athlete.”

Regardless of the results, her takeaway will be how she responded to this adversity. While she’s aiming for gold she says she has come to learn that “there is no perfect timeline to a dream or a goal.” Essentially, what she learns through this situation will help her in the long run.

While she’s one to take things day by day, there is one long-term goal she is hoping to fulfill one day. That dream is to one day own and operate a mobile coffee shop.

“I’m a gemini so I don’t like to settle down in once place,” Masters laughed, who once worked at a Starbucks during her high school years and later a local coffee shop in Louisville, Kentucky. She credits the owner of that shop for teaching her the intricacies of roasting and making “a good cup of coffee.”

When she breaks down her long-term goal it brilliantly blends two of her passions together: her love for coffee and her desire to support young athletes. Her dream is to use her mobile coffee shop as a vehicle to support the shop’s local community’s youth athletes by donating their proceeds to the communities youth sports programs.

Seeing all she’s accomplished the three words next to her on that mural is something we should all do when it comes to Masters on and off the playing field: “Just #WatchMe.”

Why We Play features stories about the power of sports to bring us together, overcome obstacles, make positive change and reach everyone. Read more here.