Masters Class

OKSANA MASTERS DOES not take no for an answer. She also does not take yes for an answer. Who do you think you are, giving her the answers?

- Michael Rosenberg

Surely, you’re no better than the doctors who told her, in 2013, that her Paralympic rowing career was over. Masters, now 28, had won a bronze medal in the trunk-and-arms mixed double skulls at the 2012 Paralympics, and she wanted to win gold in ’16. Now she was told she had spondylolisthesis. One of her vertebrae kept sliding forward, rubbing against the one below when she moved from side to side.

So that was it, the doctors said: She could not row anymore. She didn’t believe them. “I’m just stupid and too headstrong,” she says.

Masters wanted to stay in shape for the rowing career that was supposedly over, so she took up skiing. For the first three days, “I was horrible. I could not stay upright past 100 metres,” she says. A year later she won silver and bronze in cross-country skiing at the 2014 Paralympics in Sochi. Well, that’s one way to stay in shape.

Masters then went home to Louisville to see if she could resume her rowing career. Doctors replied: Duh. They had been through this already. Her body could not make the motions necessary to row with spondylolisthesis.