So no skiing and no snowboarding today. Don’t worry, not everyone has a rest day. In Beijing, where only six sports form the tournament, the biathletes, ice hockey players and curlers do come into action.
Also Ukrainian-born Oksana Masters, child of the account of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986. A special story of an athlete who has become the figurehead of Paralympic sport.
Adopted
Masters was born in 1989, three years after the disaster, with a laundry list of abnormalities on her body: only one kidney, no thumbs, webbed fingers, six toes on each foot and deformed legs.
Growing up in orphanages in Ukraine, she was adopted later in life by an American woman. She has never forgotten her homeland, especially now that the country is ravaged by war.
“I’ve always been proud to be Ukrainian, I feel proud when I see the flag. Now more than ever before,” she wrote on Instagram, posting a photo of a little Masters. “I know what it felt like to be a child with disabilities in Ukraine. Where there were few or no medical supplies. Especially now, in the middle of the war.”
