Lifestyle
She’s won 24 Paralympic medals. But Oksana Masters wants to talk about times she lost
Oksana Masters poses with one of her gold medals in Italy. Out of her 24 total medals from both Summer and Winter Paralympics, 14 are gold.
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Multi-sport athlete Oksana Masters arrived in Milan Cortina as the most decorated U.S. Winter Paralympian in history, with 19 medals already under her belt from both summer and winter Games.
But a series of setbacks had her wondering if she would add to her collection — let alone make it to the start line in Italy.
Just two days before the opening ceremony, Masters announced on Instagram that she had been in and out of hospitals with a concussion and recurrent leg infection that kept her from training — not long after recovering from hand surgery for a torn ligament. She said she cried every day leading up to the Games, admitting, “I’m not the same skier as I was training to be.”
But she didn’t give up.
“I might not be my best, but I will have the will to not give up and to keep fighting — for my village, for little Oksana — and do what I can do,” Masters said. “Because that’s what I’ve been doing my whole entire life.”
Masters, 36, was born in Ukraine with birth defects caused by radiation poisoning. She grew up shuffling between orphanages, enduring physical and emotional abuse, until she was adopted by an American single mom and moved to the U.S. at age 7.
She had each of her legs amputated when she was 9 and 14, and underwent multiple reconstructive surgeries on her hands. She got into adaptive rowing at age 13, falling in love with the sport because it gave her what she called “a new sense of freedom and control that was taken from me so many times throughout my past.”
“I found out quickly the more I pushed myself, the stronger, faster and more in control I became,” Masters wrote on her website.
Masters pictured at a rowing world cup event in 2012; she won her first Paralympic medal in the sport that year but had to pivot due to injuries.
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A decade later, Masters and her rowing partner won bronze at her first Paralympics in 2012, when she was 23. And she’s competed in every Summer and Winter Games since, pivoting to cycling, cross-country skiing and biathlon after a back injury stopped her from rowing.
Masters said she knew her eighth Paralympics “would be a battle from start to finish,” and in some ways had already counted herself out. But she made it to the starting line of her first race, the 7.5 km sitting biathlon sprint, where she told herself her usual mantra: “I am strong.”
“I do doubt myself so much that it’s just the last thing I want to hear and believe … that I am strong and I’ve got this,” she told NPR.
She won that race by 16 whole seconds. And she didn’t stop there.
Oksana Masters crosses the finish line in first place during the women’s 10km para cross-country skiing sitting race in Italy last week. She won five medals at the 2026 Paralympics, four of them gold.
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Masters leaves Italy with five new medals — four of them gold — bringing her overall total to 24 (she stores them in her sock drawer). Nineteen of those are from winter sports, extending her reign as the most decorated U.S. Winter Paralympian of all time. And she’s now the third most-decorated Paralympian in U.S. history.
“These medals, each of them are so different,” Masters told NPR in a video call on Saturday, the day before she won bronze in her final race of the Games. “They’ve had a different story for each one — to get to the start line, to earning them and fighting for them, so they all mean something special.”
But the losses have shaped her too
Even as Masters celebrates her wins, she is quick to point out that she didn’t medal at two of her biathlon races at these Games. She finished in fourth and sixth place.
She says she will remember that, just as she remembers failing to qualify for the Paralympics in 2008 and falling short of the podium in 2016.
“It took me my fourth Paralympic Games to get a gold medal,” she said, referring to her 2018 golds in cross-country skiing and biathlon. “I’m not the athlete that walked in and knew success right away.”
Masters was also part of the U.S. cross-country skiing mixed relay team that won gold for the second Winter Paralympics in a row, alongside Joshua Sweeney, Sydney Peterson, Jake Adicoff and his guide Reid Goble.
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Luke Hales/Getty Images for IPC
But she says not letting those failures define or stop her has become almost like a “secret weapon.” And that perseverance has clearly paid off.
Perhaps the best encapsulation of that is Masters’ second gold medal of these Games, in the women’s cross-country sprint race. She won that event in Pyeongchang in 2018 but placed second at Beijing in 2022 (despite a broken elbow), later calling it “the one that got away.”
And she looked to be headed for silver again this time as she approached the final ascent of the race in second place — only to overcome a 131-foot gap, overtake the leader and power through ahead of the pack.
Oksana Masters reclaimed her 2018 title in the women’s cross-country sprint, after finishing second in 2022.
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Masters raised her arms in triumph as she crossed the finish line and screamed with joy on the other side. She later described the win as “relief and redemption from Beijing.”
Speaking to NPR, Masters said she hopes others can similarly learn and grow from their own setbacks — and move at their own pace.
“Don’t compare your timeline to the person next to you or what someone’s achieved and whether you’ve achieved it or not,” Masters says. “Create those small goals within yourself, and just trust yourself.”
What’s next for Masters
Masters has a lot to celebrate. Beyond her medals, she’s looking forward to marrying her fiance Aaron Pike, a fellow dual-season U.S. Paralympian, in Italy (#Pikesana). It’s a fitting destination, since the two grew close — bonding over their love of coffee — at the 2014 Paralympics in Sochi.
Oksana Masters celebrates with her fiancé, Aaron Pike. This was the eighth Paralympics for both of them.
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“Our story began in snow, it started in the mountains,” Masters said. “And for us, we feel like that’d be a great way to start the next chapter in that journey and future together, in Italy in the mountains.”
And Masters is already thinking about her next Paralympics: Los Angeles 2028. She’ll pivot quickly to train for Para-cycling, and hopes to add to her four medals in the sport (the most recent two earned in Paris 2024).
“It’s a home Games for me, and it would be the most full-circle moment to line up on the start line,” Masters says, but it’s not her only goal for the next season. “I obviously want to stand on the podium on a home course, but I [also] want to help make the sport of cycling or, just in general, para sport better.”
Masters co-founded the Sisters in Sports Foundation in 2020, which supports female athletes with disabilities through financial grants for training, travel and adaptive equipment, plus mental health resources and mentorship.
Masters pictured after winning one of her two gold medals in para-cycling at the 2024 Paralympics in Paris. She holds five summer medals and 19 winter medals.
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She has said she wishes she could have benefited from that kind of community and mentorship when she was younger, and is eager to be a resource for the next generation. The advice she gives them is largely the same as what she tells herself:
“Even with these gold medals, I’ll go into the next season doubting myself and not believing myself, because I’ve always kind of struggled with that as an athlete,” Masters says. “I think what I take away from this, going forward in the future and to LA and other endeavors of my life, [is] just to never count myself out. Just because you might not have the best approach and smooth process in the way you imagined doesn’t mean it’s determined right there and then, until you line up on the start line.”
The Bird Cage Theatre has stood inside Knott’s Berry Farm for 72 years — albeit not always soundly. Long framed by a tin roof and a tent, the theater had a reputation for discomfort, as it was a source of punishing heat and the occasional mouse sighting.
“It was hot, it stunk and it was dirty,” says Payden Adams, the park’s VP of entertainment.
Still, though it has long felt like an endangered species, the Bird Cage Theatre is one of Southern California’s most historic revival houses, a place for vaudeville-style, fourth-wall-breaking shows that deviate from the expected theme park fare. To quote the theater’s most recent production, its entertainment can be “flirtatious and a little bit saucy.”
Knott’s Berry Farm’s Bird Cage Theatre is modeled after a historic venue in Tombstone, Ariz.
(Kyusung Gong / For The Times)
Opened in 1954, the Bird Cage Theatre has specialized in vaudeville-style melodramas.
(Knott’s Berry Farm)
And now, against all odds, the Bird Cage is getting a second life. Knott’s Berry Farm recently completed a renovation designed to keep it thriving for another 72 years. Gone is the tarpaulin roof: The Bird Cage is now a fully enclosed, soundstage-like structure. And blessedly, it has modern air conditioning.
The theater reopened this past weekend with “The Great Bank Robbery,” a 30-minute-plus show in which audiences are encouraged to boo, hiss and swoon over the characters, a Bird Cage tradition since 1954. Characters are caricatures, be it a villain that feels plucked from a cartoon western, complete with a purring raccoon for a sidekick, to a greedy wannabe politician of a bank manager. Though set in Ghost Town with period garb, there are modern flourishes, such as tongue-in-cheek nods to the theme park’s attractions and a damsel in distress who ultimately proves to be anything but.
Though it once operated as a daily theater, the Bird Cage is today most active during holidays and seasonal events, such as the park’s annual Boysenberry Festival, which also began this weekend. Popular summer show “Miss Cameo Kate’s Western Burle-Q- Revue” is a 20-minute cabaret-style performance, complete with a torch song and a slightly risqué cancan finale.
When it’s running, the Bird Cage is a must-see attraction. Live theater in theme parks can feel like a moving target, as conventional wisdom often argues that today’s smartphone-addled guests are after thrills and more attention-grabbing, interactive experiences. But when it works, such as during the over-the-top silliness of “The Great Bank Robbery,” or at Universal Studios’ “Waterworld”-themed stunt show, it can offer guests some of the most memorable, personal moments at the parks.
The Bird Cage Theatre reopened this past weekend with the show “The Great Bank Robbery.”
(Kyusung Gong / For The Times)
“You’re not wrong, especially when it comes to attention spans. We experience that,” says Adams, who oversaw the theater’s restoration. “The way we’ve pivoted and navigated is just ensuring our shows are tight and clean. It might be a little over 30 minutes, but audiences are engaged. In melodramas, we ask the audience to participate, and we can train them how to participate beforehand. When you see characters, even when they’re heightened or over-the-top, people still connect with them.”
The Bird Cage Theatre first opened in the summer of 1954, its facade a near-replica of the original Bird Cage in Tombstone, Ariz. That the family-focused Knott’s would nod to the Arizona locale is an oddity in and of itself, as the actual theater had a bawdy reputation. Stories today speak of a place that initially opened with grand ambitions but eventually succumbed to gambling and prostitution.
At Knott’s, the theater was built around existing structures, although park founder Walter Knott, according to the book “Knott’s Preserved” by Chrstopher Merritt and J. Eric Lynxwiler, often talked about completing it as a full tribute to the Arizona space. That never really happened.
Knott’s re-created the original wallpaper of the Bird Cage Theatre for its remodeling.
(Kyusung Gong / For The Times)
And yet over the years the Bird Cage won over audiences thanks to programming from Vaudeville veterans. Early on, students from nearby colleges would appear at the space, including Steve Martin, whose signed photograph graces a celebrity wall in the Bird Cage’s introductory hall. Donna Mills and singer Rick Nelson have graced the Bird Cage’s horseshoe-shaped stage, as have Dean Jones and Skip Young.
It was, to say the least, a quirky place to perform. “Knott’s Preserved” tells of a show in which a mouse once sat at the base of the stage, and quotes Martin as reminiscing over performances affected by the weather. “When it rained, no one could hear each other because the rain was beating so hard on that tarp,” Martin said.
None of that should be a problem anymore, although returning guests will likely feel they’re in a familiar space. Though the Bird Cage has been outfitted with modern lighting capable of new theme park tricks and projections, the rig is hidden among curtains designed to re-create the look of the original tent. Lights, in bird cage enclosures, still hang above the audience seating area, which has room for about 250 guests.
The Bird Cage Theatre at Knott’s Berry Farm now has a properly enclosed roof and air conditioning.
(Kyusung Gong / For The Times)
And along the way a few discoveries were made. Adams says that when they began stripping away wooden walls added sometime in the 1970s, they found the Bird Cage’s original wallpaper, a scarlet-red strip that surrounds the space with flower-adorned bird cages. Not all of it could be salvaged, so Knott’s meticulously re-created the look. With the new-old wallpaper intact, Adams estimates that guests can count about 11,055 bird cages throughout the theater.
The original pieces will be preserved in the park and gifted to important Bird Cage players. Adams jokes, “If you have a mailing address for Mr. Steve Martin, I have a gift to send him.”
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