West Geauga graduate Brittni Mason takes home 200 gold at Para Athletics World Championships
Jul. 17—Brittni Mason's journey as a world-class Paralympian and American para track and field staple continued July 17 with another gold medal.
The West Geauga graduate, after a silver in the 100-meter dash earlier in the meet in her T47 classification, captured gold in 200 on the final day of the Para Athletics World Championships in Paris.
Brittni Mason wins GOLD in the Women's 200m T47!
: @Peacock — @Xfinity pic.twitter.com/ROn3xZKe3V
— NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) July 17, 2023
Mason crossed the line with a time of 25.36 seconds, fending off a last-25 challenge from Serbia's Saska Sokolov.
"God's Timing," Mason tweeted after the race, with two holding-back-tears emojis and one heart emoji.
God's Timing ❤️ https://t.co/35KR1tAhGT
— Brittni (@_brittnnii) July 17, 2023
After accepting congratulations from and wishing well to her counterparts, a visibly emotional Mason kneeled for a moment on the track to process her second world para individual-event crown.
MASON FOR @_brittnnii wins her first world title of #Paris23 in the 200m!#ShowTheWorld // #TeamUSA pic.twitter.com/QIPaInSyZH
— U.S. Paralympics Track & Field (@USParaTF) July 17, 2023
Since bursting on the para scene as a junior at Eastern Michigan, Mason has become a stalwart at the world level for Team USA.
The 25-year-old was a 2019 gold medalist at worlds in T46 100 and competed in the Paralympics in Tokyo, which were held in 2021 due to the novel coronavirus pandemic.
West Geauga grad Brittni Mason sets world record at Para Athletics Championships in Dubai
In those Paralympics, she was the T46 silver medalist in 100 and 200.
Mason, one of the premier News-Herald coverage area girls sprinters in her high school days at West G, was the 2016 Division II 100 state runner-up and third in 200 as a senior for the Wolverines.
At Eastern, Mason was part of the school record-breaking 4x100 in 2019 during an accomplished college career indoor and outdoor and is one of three athletes in school history to compete at the Olympics/Paralympics.
Coming into para worlds, Mason was profiled on the Team USA website for her laudable and unique path to the world stage.
She was born with Erb's palsy, which affects her range of arm motion and qualifies her as a para athlete, a classification of which she wasn't aware until her junior season at Eastern.
"T46 and T47 is a combined class, so it's like upper limb of the arm and also lower limb," Mason explained in a 2019 interview with The News-Herald. "I am considered the worst of my classification since I'm T46, which means my upper extremity of my shoulder and a loss of range of motion. And then there's others that are T47 that are below the elbow. So mine is more brachial plexic at the top, and then there's some that are elbow or missing a hand.
"So freshman, sophomore and part of my junior year in college, I had a really hard time adjusting. My arm wasn't really used to doing that much workload of lifting three times a week and running six days a week. So my shoulder would swell up a lot, and I'd have to get a lot of treatment for it. It would be very sore. It was just very uncomfortable."
West Geauga grad Brittni Mason savoring Paralympic world meet whirlwind
Mason overcame that to become a world-class para track and field athlete.
This year's para worlds meet was streamed live on Peacock. A two-hour "best of" encore presentation will be aired July 23 starting at noon on CNBC.
