Tatyana McFadden has gained tremendous reputation in the Paralympic Movement

After ‘scariest moment of career,’ 17-time Paralympic medalist Tatyana McFadden happy to be back

The Team USA athlete Tatyana McFadden

Tatyana McFadden is widely considered the fastest female wheelchair racer of all time — but her road to success has been far from easy.

The 17-time Paralympic medalist has 23 World Major Marathon wins, has broken five track-and-field world records, and is competing in her sixth Paralympic Games in Tokyo this week, representing the United States. Those accomplishments are particularly remarkable given her upbringing: The 32-year-old started with virtually nothing.

As a result, from a young age, she leaned into the one thing she could control: her attitude. “I’ve always had a determined mindset,” McFadden said

Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, with spina bifida, a condition that left her paralyzed from the waist down, McFadden was turned over to a local orphanage by her parents. Doctors doubted she’d live more than a few days. Instead, she spent the first six years of her life in Russia’s “Orphanage No. 13” without a wheelchair or medical care.

At age 6, she was adopted by Debbie McFadden, the commissioner of disabilities for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Living in Baltimore, McFadden took up sports to help strengthen her muscles and fell in love with wheelchair racing. At age 15, she made her Paralympic debut at the 2004 Summer Paralympic Games in Athens, Greece — winning two medals, a silver, and a bronze.

But the obstacles didn’t end there.

At 16, McFadden was barred from competing on her high school track team alongside non-wheelchair students. She sued the school and won. At 27, after winning six medals at the 2016 Summer Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro, blood clots almost derailed her career. She attributes her recovery — and continued dedication to her sport — to the same resilience that pushed her to survive in that Russian orphanage.

Or, as McFadden says more simply: “I like challenges.”

In early 2017, McFadden describes having “several surgeries” to try to fix the problem, but the clots “kept coming back and they kept traveling.”

So many years of being in racing and training, months of treatment journey to rid her body of the problem, including the lymphedema that happened as a result, to just beginning her recovery phase.

And because of where she was in relation to her competitors’ preparation, competing at her sixth Paralympic Games was never a given after enduring the “scariest time” of her career.

“I think if we spoke maybe in 2018 or 2019, I probably would’ve been like, ‘I don’t know because my speeds weren’t quite there, I was quite far from the leader,” she said.

“I had good races and I had some bad races, but I did surprise myself, and I was doing OK in the marathons and still kind of hanging in, hanging on. But while I was on my recovery phase, everyone else was getting faster.”

But she would never give up. “We’ve come a long way and we’re fighting a good fight, and it’s for all the right reasons,” she continued.

“Growing up in an orphanage for the first six years was definitely not easy. I didn’t have [proper] treatment [for spina bifida]. I would scoot around, or I would walk on my hands because I didn’t have a wheelchair. If I wanted to be where all the other kids were going to be, I had to get there myself.”

“Through that experience, I think I developed a lot of characteristics that you might see in racing — like my mental and physical strength, determination, and ability to get over challenges. I’ve always had a determined mindset.”

“My upbringing was definitely different compared to most, but I think that’s what helps me get through things,” she said.

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