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Our American Stories

One Leg, Thirteen World Records, and an Incredible Athlete

Our American Stories

iHeartPodcasts

Society & Culture, Documentary

4.6817 Ratings

🗓️ 20 March 2026

⏱️ 28 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

On this episode of Our American Stories, Amy Palmiero-Winters is one of the most accomplished athletes in adaptive sports. She holds 13 world records for distance running, completing marathons and endurance races using a prosthetic leg.

Her journey into competitive running began after a life-changing accident that could have ended her athletic ambitions entirely. Instead, it pushed her toward a new challenge.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

This is an I-Heart podcast.

0:02.5

Guaranteed Human.

0:14.2

This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people.

0:22.1

And to search for The Our American Stories podcast, go to the IHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcast.

0:29.1

Up next we'll be hearing from Amy Palmyero Winters, who is the founder of the One Step Ahead Foundation.

0:35.3

Amy holds 13 world records for running, and she also happens to have one

0:40.0

prosthetic leg. Here's Amy with her story.

0:47.5

I was one of three children. I had two older brothers. We had one brother in between myself and my

0:58.2

middle brother. He had a heart defect when he was born and so at the age of six months

1:03.2

old he passed away. So my mother was not expecting to have any more children. They had

1:09.7

just lost their son and come to find out she was pregnant.

1:13.6

I ended up showing up three months early. I weighed two pounds and I remember my dad telling me that from day one that I was a fighter and I was just kicking the incubator to get out.

1:30.3

And I think that that really sets the format for who I am and basically my lifelong quest of achieving the unthinkable.

1:41.3

You know, we had a good childhood, we had a hard childhood. We didn't have, you know,

1:48.1

the best of circumstances. I grew up watching my father abuse and beat up my mother, us as children.

1:56.8

You can either become that or you can choose to be something different.

2:02.0

And for myself, I always chose to go the different path and be the different person.

2:07.1

And when we were growing up, we didn't really have anything.

2:10.4

We didn't have the financial aspects.

2:13.7

So for me, running was something that was free.

2:19.3

It didn't matter where you were. If you had money or you didn't have money, anybody could run.

2:23.3

Sports got me through everything.

...

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