Wheelchair racer Tatyana McFadden, widely considered “the fastest woman in the world,” brought her Paralympic medal count to 22 in this year’s games, making her the most-decorated U.S. track and field athlete in either the Paralympics or Olympics. She was also raised by two moms!
“My superpower is strong, I’m a strong woman,” she said in a press statement at her sponsor Nike’s website. “What motivates me is changing the sport, to be more inclusive, to have more equality, to have more accessibility for people with disabilities who want to get involved with Paralympics or just want to get involved with youth programs or adapt to sports in general.”
In this year’s Paralympics, she won silver in the 100 meters and bronze in the mixed 4×100 m relay, and also competed in the 400 meters, 800 meters, and marathon. The U.S. Paralympics Track & Field Team had chosen her and high jumper Roderick Townsend as their captains for the games.
As a child, she was adopted from an orphanage in Russia by Deborah McFadden and Bridget O’Shaughnessy, a couple from the U.S. Deborah had also been a competitive athlete and born with a disability. Her advocacy for people with disabilities led President George H. W. Bush to appoint her United States commissioner of disabilities in 1989, where she helped write the Americans with Disabilities Act. She was on a business trip to Russia when she first met Tatyana and felt a bond with the girl who had been born with spina bifida.
Back in the United States, Tatyana tried many sports but loved wheelchair racing. She entered her first Paralympics in 2004 at age 15, and returned with a silver and a bronze medal. Her high school track team, however, would not allow her to compete with standing athletes, so she and Deborah advocated for the 2008 passage of “Tatyana’s Law,” or the Maryland Fitness and Athletics Equity for Students with Disabilities Act, which ensures equal athletic opportunities for students with disabilities.
She’s medaled in every Summer Paralympics since 2004, gaining a total of eight gold, eight silver, and six bronze medals, at every distance from 100 meters to the marathon. In 2014, she also competed in cross-country skiing at the Winter Paralympics in Russia (her only Winter Paralympics), where her birth mother joined them to watch her race and win silver. Tatyana has also had 24 World Major Marathon wins that include four consecutive Grand Slams (first place in Boston, Chicago, NYC and London marathons in the same year).
After the Rio Paralympics in 2016, however, she was diagnosed with a blood-clotting disorder. “It’s been a really hard climb up. I’ve focused on being more confident and still believing in myself that I can do it, because I know that I can,” she said. It doesn’t sound like she’s going to stop competing anytime soon, either. The 35-year-old told Nike that she wants to bring her major marathon medal count up to 30.
Tatyana also has a master’s degree in education and an undergraduate degree in Human Development and Family Studies from the University of Illinois Champaign/Urbana. She is active as an advocate for healthy lifestyles thorough sports and nutrition, volunteering with Move United (a para-sports program) and Stop the Clot (to help individuals with blood clotting disorders), and is a lifetime member of the Girl Scouts.
She continues to be actively involved in advancing the rights of people with disabilities, and speaks regularly about her experiences as a person with disability, adoption, and being an elite athlete. And she asserts, “The best advice I can give for the next generation is that life isn’t about what we don’t have, but what we do with the gifts we’re given.”
If you’d like to share her story with the young people in your life, check out the picture book biography Fastest Woman on Earth: The Story of Tatyana McFadden, by Francesca Cavallo, illustrated by Luis San Vicente (Undercats), with an introduction by Deborah. I heartily recommend it.
Congratulations to Tatyana on all of her successes—I can’t wait to see what more she does in the future!