04-14-2022 Howard Magazine - Flipbook - Page 29
Tatyana McFadden wins the women’s wheelchair division at the 2021 Bank of America Chicago
Marathon on Oct. 10. PHOTO BY PAUL BEATY/AP
BY MIKE KLINGAMAN Howard Magazine
S
he turns 33 next week, three days
after she plans to compete in the
Boston Marathon. Guess what
Tatyana McFadden wants for her
birthday? On April 18, she’s expected to
approach the start, earbuds blaring Beyonce’s
“Girls Run The World,” and then set off to
prove it.
No matter that the Clarksville resident
has won Boston five times, and 24 major
marathons in all. For McFadden, who uses
a wheelchair, each triumph is a testament
to her will as well as an inspiration for
the world’s disabled. Her legs may be
gone, followers say, but McFadden has the
backbone of a champion.
“Each race, I feel like I’m doing something
for the common good,” she said. “I’m a voice
for those who don’t have one of their own.”
For nearly two decades, the Russianborn athlete has blazed a trail for those like
her, spurring them to follow suit. She can
swim, ski and scuba dive; play ice hockey,
basketball and tennis. McFadden can glide
across a balance beam on her hands and
scramble up a rope with ease. Last year, she
went rock climbing. But all of that pales
beside her success on the track. A six-time
Paralympian, she has won 20 medals, eight
of them gold. Rivals acknowledge her grit
and call her The Beast. Another name that
fits? The Chair Woman of Sports.
Ego-driven, McFadden is not. Those
medals hang in a closet in the family’s home
on a leafy cul-de-sac in Howard County.
She does admit to having a swelled head.
Sometime back, a study of her skull found an
anomaly.
“The ‘will’ part of my brain, which
affects one’s determination to do things, is
significantly larger than average,” she said. “I
think it stems from my past, and my will to
survive in an orphanage.”
Born with spina bifida and paralyzed
from the waist down, she spent six years
in an institution in St. Petersburg, Russia,
before her adoption by Deborah McFadden,
then U.S. Commissioner of Disabilities. In
America, she received her first wheelchair, “a
little red one that was really cool and really
fast — a lot faster than crawling on the floor,”
she said. “To me, it was freedom.”
She was off and running, Tatyana-style.
Her arm strength is renowned. Once,
coaxed by a sponsor, McFadden attempted
to pull a BMW that was tied by a rope to her
howardmagazine.com | SPRING 2022 | 29