Oksana Masters competes during the women's middle sitting 10-kilometer biathlon at the 2021 World Para Snow Sports Championships on January 16, 2022 in Lillehammer, Norway.
Max Nelson was at lunch in Minnesota. Erin Martin was staying at an Airbnb in Washington. And Sydney Peterson had just returned to her car in Montana.
All three athletes were in different parts of the country when they received phone calls letting them know they had been named to the U.S. Nordic skiing team that will compete this month in Beijing.
After months of anticipation and a few days of uncertainty, Team USA’s 14 Para Nordic skiers and one personal guide boarded a flight and headed to China last week.
Over the next few weeks, America’s top Nordic skiers have the potential to match or even surpass the 16 medals they earned at the Paralympic Winter Games PyeongChang 2018.
Para Nordic skiing is one of the first events to begin in Beijing, with the men’s and women’s 6-kilometer biathlon set for March 5, only a few hours after the previous day’s Opening Ceremony. Competition in Beijing will include both biathlon and cross-country skiing. Each discipline has three distances for men and women, with each separated into sitting, standing and visually impaired categories.
Oksana Masters is already one of the biggest names heading into the Winter Paralympics. A 10-time medalist in Nordic skiing, cycling and rowing, she has appeared on the cover of SELF magazine and in commercials for the Beijing Games.
Masters quickly transitioned to Nordic skiing after winning a pair of gold medals in cycling at the Paralympic Games Tokyo 2020 in August. She then continued to dominate during the first part of the Para Nordic season this winter.
In January, the multi-sport star returned from a positive coronavirus test in time to capture her ninth and 10th career world titles at the inaugural World Para Snow Sports Championships in Lillehammer, Norway.
Masters enters the Winter Paralympics — her sixth consecutive Paralympics — with some unfinished business. She failed to qualify when Beijing hosted the Summer Paralympics in 2008, a disappointment that still weighs on her mind.
“That failure became the drive to prove not just (to) everyone who said I will never make it as an athlete but prove it to myself I can be an elite athlete,” Masters wrote on Instagram. “… This Games feels like my Paralympic journey is coming full circle.”
Masters’ biggest competition in Beijing could be Kendall Gretsch, her American teammate who’s a three-time gold medalist in Nordic skiing and the triathlon. With their gold medals in Tokyo, Gretsch and Masters became only the fifth and sixth Americans to win at both a Summer and Winter Paralympics.
Like Masters, Gretsch started training for the Winter Paralympics almost immediately after returning from Tokyo. She has joined Masters atop the medal podium at world cup events and at the world championships this winter.
In PyeongChang, Gretsch became the first American to win an Olympic or Paralympic medal in biathlon. With her combination of endurance and accurate shooting, she’s considered a heavy favorite to reach the podium again in Beijing.
