McFadden named Homecoming parade grand marshal

Brenton Tse

McFadden accepted the honor of being this year’s Homecoming Grand Marshall.

By The Daily Illini sports staff

University alum Tatyana McFadden has been named the grand marshal for the 2016 Homecoming Parade.

McFadden won six medals in the Rio Paralympic games as a track athlete, giving her 17 medals over her Paralympic career.

The 2014 graduate also recently garnered her sixth-consecutive Bank of America Chicago marathon first-place finish last month.

McFadden won her first major marathon in Chicago in 2009. She became the first athlete — able-bodied or otherwise — to win all four major marathons in the same year in 2013. She repeated the task in 2014 and 2015.

McFadden was born with spina bifida and lived in a Russian orphanage in the early years of her life. When McFadden was six, she was adopted by Deborah McFadden, who raised her in the United States.

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The parade will begin at 6:00 p.m. on Friday.

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