As a Russian  child with a disability, Tatyana spent her earliest years in an orphanage, ill equipped to meet her needs.  

The conditions in the orphanage was so poor they could not buy crayons for the children to color with let alone a wheelchair for Tatyana to get around in. She spent the first six years of her life using her arms as legs and walking on her hands as if they were feet.   

In 1994, Debbie McFadden, working as the U.S. Commissioner of the Administration on Developmental Disabilities for the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, visited Tatyana's orphanage on a business trip.  

When Debbie met Tatyana, she immediately felt a connection with the young girl and decided to adopt her and bring her to the United States. When she arrived in the US she grew very sick.  

She was severely anemic and grossly underweight and doctors thought she would only survive a few more months. For a second time in her short life, Tatyana's innate strength would defy the odds.  

To aid in her recovery Debbie began to enroll Tatyana in various youth sports groups. Tatyana began participating with the Bennet Blazers, a Baltimore, Maryland area wheelchair sports organization.  

It did not take long for Tatyana's racing career to take off. In 2004, at the age of 15, she was the youngest member of the USA track and field team at the Athens Paralympic Games, her first international competition. She shocked the world in the process, winning a silver medal in the 100 meters and a bronze in the 200 meters.  

Two short years later, Tatyana etched her name in the record books, winning the gold medal in the 100 meters in world record time at the 2006 IPC World Championships in Assen, Netherlands. She followed that performance with two silver medal performances in the 200 meters and 400 meters, securing a spot in international wheelchair racing heading in the 2008 Beijing Parlaympic Games.  

With the encouragement of two-sport Paralympian Alana Nichols, McFadden was encouraged to try Nordic skiing for the first time last year. It didn't take her long to pick up the sport, as she earned a national title at her first U.S. Adaptive Nordic Skiing National Championship in January 2013. She is currently a member of the 2013-2014 U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing National Team, having already earned five top-10 finishes in the first three world cups of her Nordic career.