KANSAS CITY, Mo. — You see the mountain. Tatsiana Khvitsko sees the peak.
"God has a plan," she says. "It won't be easy, but it will be good. ‘Better than you can ask or imagine.'"
That last bit is from Ephesians 3:20. It's her go-to Bible verse. It's her grace and her rock.
"It's just my life," she says.
***
You see hurdles. Tatsiana Khvitsko sees the tape.
"It's pretty amazing what we've watched her overcome," says Kathy Ingram, one of Khvitsko's "host" parents since Tatsiana, a native of Belarus, was 5 years old. "When she loves something, you know, she pursues it."
In some ways, this is a love story. A dream chased on one good leg and three good fingers, at a dead sprint.
"It's a gift," Khvitsko says. "It's like I have to go running. If I don't run for a while, I feel, like — mad. I have so much energy (to burn)."
These days, Khvitsko — better known to her friends as Tanya — has the wind at her back and Rio on the brain. She's been training off-and-on for the 2016 Summer Paralympics in Brazil, hoping to compete in the 100-meter dash.
Born with a right leg that ends at the knee and a left leg that ends at the ankle, the 22-year-old from Lenexa, Kansas, is a marketing whiz by day and Flo-Jo by night. Tanya runs with the aid of a Cheetah blade — a curved, carbon-fiber prosthesis made famous by Oscar Pistorious, the bilateral amputee from South Africa who kept London buzzing by competing in both the Olympic and Paralympic Games.
"There's a quote next to his picture that says he doesn't need feet, that it only slows him down," Khvitsko says. "It makes me feel like, ‘Yeah, I don't really need feet, it'll only slow me down.'"
***
You see clouds. Tatsiana Khvitsko sees a rainbow that's just waiting to break through.
"Have to be patient," she says. "That's one thing I've learned all my life."
The story begins with Chernobyl, the worst nuclear power-plant accident on record. Reactor No. 4 exploded in Ukraine on April 26, 1986, releasing 400 times more radioactive material into the atmosphere than the atomic bombs that hit Hiroshima during World War II. Neighboring Belarus happened to be downwind of the plant — the country took on what was believed to be 70 percent of the total fallout.
The ripples in the region proved to physical as well as psychological; Tanya was delivered five years after the explosion with damaged legs, a left hand with only three small fingers and a thumb, and a right hand that only featured a thumb.
"But she still types faster than I do," Ingram says, chuckling.
One charity recently estimated that after Chernobyl, there was an 80 percent rise in Belarusian children born with disabilities. As late as the mid 1990s they were generally cloistered, kept out of sight; many were abandoned and left in the care of the state.
Much of Tanya's pre-college education was spent at a boarding school for disabled youth. She learned to smile in self-defense. It was a reflex action that dates back to her childhood, so that people would keep maintaining eye contact.
"I wanted people to see my face," says Tanya, who first came to Kansas City as part of a local program aimed at helping families in Belarus. "And not my hands."
After more than a decade of summer visits here, splitting time with the Ingrams and three other host families, that reticence slowly began to melt away. New prosthetics were provided by the Shriners' Hospital in St. Louis, where staffers consistently found themselves amazed at Khvitsko's coordination.
"They said there's never been anyone who, through all 15 years that they've been seeing her, that's been able to utilize the legs the way she has," offers Susan Goodman, another of Tanya's "host" moms. "For being a bilateral, you usually walk with a limp, or you usually fall. From the get-go, she just had this natural ability, just very athletic."
***
You see the tunnel. Tatsiana Khvitsko sees the light at the end.
"She's a go-getter," Goodman continued. "She's a fighter."
The Paralympic epiphany came last August, during a visit to Florida, while Tanya was being fitted for the Cheetah blade at the Prosthetic & Orthotic Associates (POA) of Orlando.
Eventually, she took it out for a test spin, like a kid with a new sports car.
Then another.
Then another.
"I was running so far, so fast, people had to stop me," Tanya says. "They were telling me to slow down. It just felt amazing. It was kind of like flying."
Khvitsko, who participated in volleyball, table tennis, and competitive wheelchair dancing in Belarus, was flying at such a speed that one of the POA staffers decided to get out a stopwatch. They told Tanya that some of her sprints were only a second or so off the qualifying times for the US Paralympic team.
"She came back (to Kansas) and was much more motivated," Goodman says. "Plus the legs — it made such a difference."
So did a meeting in Florida with Oksana Masters, a Paralympic rower from Ukraine whose extremities were also affected by the Chernobyl disaster. Masters and Robert Jones, a former Marine, took bronze in the trunk and arms mixed double sculls in London, becoming the first US competitors to ever medal in the event.
Of course, Khvitsko's logistical status is a bit more complicated, as she's not a US citizen and is currently on a work visa. She admits to being torn between her homeland — a prosthetist in Belarus recently reached out and offered to put Tanya in touch with the national Paralympic committee back home — and an affinity for the States. At some point, the discussion moves from talent and over to time, money, and commitment.
"If I really want to do the Paralympics, I'll definitely have to give up something," says Tanya, who's currently interning at Knit-Rite, a textiles company in Kansas City, Kan. "With hard work and the right direction and hope, I think anything's possible."
Khvitsko graduated this past spring with a bachelor's degree in corporate communications from MidAmerica Nazarene University, where she's been working with Whitney Rodden, the head strength and conditioning coach for MNU's athletic department. When Rodden asked a pal who used to train Paralympians in Colorado Springs for advice, this was the reply:
"She's going to fall. It's OK, it's going to happen. Just push through it."
They've been pushing ever since. Tanya's competed in three different 5K races; her best finish was clocked at roughly the 30-minute mark.
The next hill, both real and metaphorical: Learning to drive a car.
"It's not going to be easy, and I'm just thinking, 'I don't think she can do it.' " Goodman says. "And then I'm like, 'Who am I kidding? She'll figure it out.' She's amazing."
Better than you can ask. Or imagine.
You can follow Sean Keeler on Twitter @seankeeler or email him at seanmkeeler@gmail.com
