No (More) Excuses

Strides, Often Painful, but Always, Always Forward



Hicksville, N.Y.

Amy Palmiero-Winters has an arsenal of left legs — one for getting around, one for flip-flops, one for cycling, one very attractive leg with a four-inch high heel for going out and three for running prodigious distances.

She runs so far, so long, that she is excelling in world endurance races, earning her the Sullivan Award on April 14 as the outstanding amateur athlete in the United States. (Wilma Rudolph, Greg Louganis, Bill Bradley and Michelle Kwan are a few previous winners of this big-deal award.)

All of that is amazing for a woman who was wiped out on her motorcycle by an automobile driver blasting out of a stop sign. But there’s another amazing thing about Palmiero-Winters: she ran a marathon as a farewell tribute to her original left leg, while it was still attached to her.

(Time to get back into shape.)