Nobody has impacted the world of para-rowing in the way that Oksana Masters has during the last year.
The 24-year-old from Ukraine and her teammate, Rob Jones, won the USA’s first-ever Paralympic medal in the TaMix2x boat classification in the London 2012 Paralympics. The American duo claimed bronze behind China and France.
After being exposed to radiation from the infamous explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant while she was inuterio in 1986, Masters was born with birth deformities and sent to live in an orphanage.
She had her legs amputated as a child and was beaten and raped at a second orphanage before she was adopted by a single mother from the USA when she was seven years old.
Masters’ new mother eventually moved to Louisville, Kentucky with her new daughter. Masters started rowing a year later when she was 13 years old.
Masters’ story has been well documented by the media, most notably she was featured in the American magazine Sports Illustrated in August 2012 and she posed semi-nude for ESPN The Magazine’s annual body issue last year as well.
Seven years after she started rowing, Masters set a world record at the 2010 CRASH-B Springs in Boston, rowing 1,000m in 4:34. Masters was also the first adaptive sculler to row in in Indianapolis Rowing Club’s Head of the Eagle regatta and she finished second at the Adaptive World Championship trails in 2011 with her former partner Augusto Perez.
Master's 2012 Paralympic victory with Jones came only two years after Jones was injured by an IED while serving with the US Marine Crops in Afghanistan. Both his legs were amputated above the knee.
Together, Masters and Jones are known as Team Bad Company.
They finished third at the 2013 World Rowing Cup at Eton Dorney on 22 June with a time of 4:39.12.
In 2012, Masters won the USA Rowing Female Athlete of the Year award, making her the first male or female adaptive rower to win the award.
