An Atherton High School graduate and eight-time Olympic Paralympic medalist is featured Tuesday on HBO’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel.”
Double-amputee Oskana Masters, who trained for her first Olympic medal while rowing on the Ohio River, will be interviewed for HBO by correspondent Soledad O’Brien.
Masters was born in Ukraine in 1989 with six toes on each foot, five webbed fingers on each hand, and no thumbs. Her left leg was 6-inches shorter than her right and both were missing weight-bearing bones. She was adopted at age seven and a half by Gay Masters, who moved with her young daughter to Kentucky for a job at the University of Louisville.
More:The bond between Paralympian Oksana Masters and her mother began in a Ukrainian orphanage
A Jefferson County Public School teacher at Highland Middle School suggested Oksana Masters might enjoy the Louisville Adaptive Rowing Program, and the teenager’s passion for athletics and competition was ignited.
“She was pretty quickly the best rower that they had,” Gay Masters, Oksana’s mother, previously told the Courier Journal. “I think that’s because she’s determined, stubborn, competitive and motivated,” traits she had developed to survive during her childhood at the Ukrainian orphanage.
Oksana continued to row during her four years at Atherton High School. She pursued rowing with such a passion that it took her all the way to the Paralympics in London in 2012. Competing with Rob Jones, also a double-amputee athlete, the pair brought home a Bronze Olympic medal in the trunk and arms mixed double skulls event.
When the summer games ended, Oksana turned her sights to the winter Olympics and began skiing immediately after London. With just over a year to learn and train for two new sports, Oksana competed in cross country skiing and the biathlon at the 2014 Paralympic Winter Games in Sochi. She would leave Russia with silver and bronze medals.
For most athletes, concentrating on one Olympic discipline is enough, but most are not Oksana, who is the rare athlete winning medals in both Winter and Summer Games.
“Sports helped me to learn to appreciate my body more for what it was able to do, not on what it was missing,” she said.
More:Louisville’s Oksana Masters named Team USA’s Female Paralympic Athlete of the Year
Due to a back injury after Sochi, Masters took up hand cycling as a recovery process and to help maintain her fitness.
In that sport, she qualified for the 2016 Paralympic Games in Rio and finished just off the podium in fourth in the road race. Masters is currently training to compete in the cycling events in the postponed Toyko 2021 Olympics.
How to watch ‘Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel’
“A jock of all trades” is the way O’ Brien describes Masters in the HBO report, available on its streaming platforms after it airs at 10 p.m. on Tuesday.
Tune in to “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” to hear more from this incredible sportswoman who started her career in Louisville as she discusses the obstacles she overcame in order to rise to the top of adaptive sports.
Reach Kirby Adams at kadams@courier-journal.com or Twitter @kirbylouisville.
