Oksana Masters beamed as she rode through the mixed zone, stopping to talk to the media, her infectiously vivacious personality oozing out. She had just claimed her second Paralympic gold in two days, finishing the women’s H5 road race in one hour 52 minutes and 14 seconds.
“I feel like I’m on cloud nine,” Masters said. “I feel dizzy. I have to pee! I’m so excited, all the emotions right now.”
As she rode away, however, the 35-year-old stopped her bike and hugged her adoptive mother, the woman who saved her life. Gay Masters, an American college professor fought for two years to get Oksana out of the Ukrainian orphanage system.
Neglected at birth after being born with conditions caused by radiation poisoning from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, Oksana spent seven and a half years in orphanages where she was abused and raped by men. In her raw account, The Hard Part Out Loud, she said she associated sleep with abuse.
When she moved to America with Gay, however, she was loved and, as the rain eased in Paris on Thursday, mother and daughter held each other in a tight embrace and sobbed hard. They had done it. For the second consecutive Paralympic Games, Oksana had won gold in both the H5 road time trial and road race — a classification for hand-cyclists who have…
