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Tatyana McFadden is a seven-time Paralympian, 20-time Paralympic medalist, 20-time world championships medalist, and has won 24 Abbott World Marathon Majors races. In her career, she has won five New York City Marathons, including four consecutively. In 2015, she lowered the event record by seven minutes and 20 seconds with a time of 1:43:04, a record that would stand for seven years.  

McFadden’s win at the 2021 Chicago Marathon was her 24th victory in an Abbott World Marathon Majors race, giving her more majors wins than any other female wheelchair athlete. She won her second career United Airlines NYC Half in 2019 before finishing as runner-up at the TCS New York City Marathon that fall, and again in 2021.  

Despite having to miss the Boston and London marathons in 2017 due to blood clots, McFadden won four golds that year at the World Para Athletics Championships. She had a six-medal performance at the Rio 2016 Paralympics – including gold medals in the 400-, 800-, 1500-, and 5000-meter events – the most medals by a U.S. track and field athlete at a Paralympics since 1992. She flew straight from Rio to New York to lead an NYRR Youth Wheelchair Racing Clinic at Manhattan School for Children, where she donated a racing chair to NYRR’s Youth Wheelchair Training program. At the Tokyo Paralympics in 2021, she won a gold, silver, and bronze medal. In 2022, she won three more world championship medals. 

Born with spina bifida and left at a Russian orphanage as a baby, McFadden was adopted by an American family who introduced her to sports. Her family also helped overturn federal laws that prohibited wheelchair racers and able-bodied runners from competing alongside one another at the high school level in the United States. In 2020, she co-produced and starred in the Netflix documentary "Rising Phoenix." She also won a silver medal in cross-country skiing at the Sochi 2014 Paralympics.