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Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply. iHeart presents the Big Three Championship next Sunday, August 24th. The remaining two teams fight it out for the Big Three Championship, Dr. Jay Trophy in the most physical, fierce, and competitive basketball league in the world. The action starts with the Big Three 8th Annual All-Star Game, featuring all-stars Dwight Howard, Montrez Horrell, MVP Michael Beasley, Lance will make you Dan Stevenson, Jordan Crawford, Greg Monroe, Earl Clark, Nazia Core, and more.
Show you why they are the best three-on-three basketball players in the world. Big Three's exciting All-Star Game, plus the crowning of a new Big Three Champion. The No Hold Spart Action starts Sunday at 2 p.m. Eastern 11 Pacific, only on CBS. Good morning.
Welcome to Today. From back to school to tackling your to-do list, the Today Show is your best start to the day. It's a new season and every morning. We're here to help you take it all off as the forecast calls for football all across the country. Blockbuster stars, live concerts, and so much more.
Wake up to where it's all happening. We're getting back to all of it and the best way to start is together. Watch the Today Show, weekday mornings at 7 a.m. on NBC. This is Danielle Fischel from Pod Meets World.
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Learn more at Motts.com. This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star. and the American people. To search for the Our American Stories podcast, Go to the iHeartRadio app. or wherever you get your podcasts.
Floyd Landis grew up in Farmersville, Pennsylvania, in a Mennonite family. Like the Amish.
Some Mennonites avoid modern technology. Though his family had electricity, there was no radio or television to occupy young Landis' time.
So he rode his bike. Let's take a listen to the story. My name is Floyd Landis. I grew up as a Mennonite kid in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Through a bunch of strange twists and turns in life, ended up winning the Tour de France, but that's the end of the story.
Where it all started was as kind of a naive kid and a. Religious community that doesn't really embrace professional sports or encourage professional sports. Most people know about The Amish, the Mennonites and the Amish share a lot of the same beliefs. and sort of conservative, hard work approach to life. And so yeah, the first the first I guess twenty years of my life I don't think I missed uh a Sunday of church, Sunday night of church.
Often Wednesday nights, Saturday nights, they spend a lot of time at church. That's the center of the community and the center of the. It's more than a religion, it's it's kind of a its own little Environment, its own little society, right? And They're good people. They take care of each other.
They h they value things that I think most people would value, which is Caring about other people and honesty and hard work and just living a good life. They, of course, tie it to the Bible and to religion, but. They don't allow televisions or radios. They don't like rock and roll music. Of course, that's the devil.
Some of the things that I sort of took for granted as just the way things are ended up seeming odd when I left Pennsylvania. For example, they really like hunting in Pennsylvania, and I enjoyed it as a kid growing up, too. Being outside, and it's one of the things that there was to do. You know, we didn't have video games to shoot things on, so we had actual guns. And so my dad, being kind of resourceful, thought at one point we should go to the bottom.
Squirrel hunting, and rather than walk around in the woods, we should just sit in a canoe and float down the river. And this was very effective. It turns out the squirrels can't hear you coming, and you end up not having to hunt very long before you have way more squirrels than you want. But he loved it.
So that was my dad's sort of approach to things. He's always trying to find some kind of efficiency, which kind of ruined the point, which was to be outside and walk around. Even now, you'll see in the fall time when deer hunting season is open, you'll see Amish and Mennonite guys on their bicycles with either a bow and arrow or a shotgun across their handlebars, and then they'll leave four or five in the morning before the sun comes up, and they'll come back with the deer on the back, on the rack, on the back of their bike. and their gun or or or bow and arrow in the front. And to me as a kid that seemed like something normal that people would do but I found out Later, that's not necessarily how the rest of the world goes about their life.
With that backdrop, we're kind of just religious rednecks, or whatever you want to call us. But good people. My parents are wonderful people. I couldn't ask for better role models or better parents. And You know, I didn't at the time appreciated.
I didn't resent them, but I didn't appreciate the the value of the the life that they chose to live. Which is quieter and a lot less stressful than what I ended up having to live through in my life, but. But they're good and I you know, after all these years I've I spend time with them now a lot more than I used to and sort of appreciate it more. But for whatever reason my parents sent me to a public school For me, the public school was all right. I liked it and I think in the end my parents probably blamed that to some extent for for the fact that I left in the end.
They sent my younger um sisters and brother to Mennonite schools. But it was yeah, it was a For me, it was a Bit of a learning curve because we didn't have a television, we didn't have. any sort of exposure to Popular culture. And so it's hard when you're a kid that gets sent to a public school where everyone's got a whole different, I mean, a whole different experience in life, really. The things they talk about.
were completely foreign to me. Everything was kind of uh I always felt like I was a step behind in trying to figure out what was actually happening or why people were doing what they were doing. I think that's why I enjoyed riding my bicycle, because it was kind of Therapy for me after school, I could go try to reconcile in my head what I was being told as a kid in church and what I was being exposed to in school. And just to give an example of how How strange, I guess strange is a good word. And none of these words that I use to describe the Amish and the Meneg or the place I grew up are meant to be pejoratives or judgmental.
It really is a strange place. The other thing that's kind of unique about that place is there's a lot of auction houses. My dad would always spend his day up there trying to find treasures for cheap. And so he found me a yellow bike up there in the dumpster one time. I don't know how old I was, it must have been four or five.
That's the first bike I learned to ride on. I remember my older sister, a couple years older than me, pushing me around in the driveway trying to figure out how to ride this thing. But yeah, bicycles were always a big part of it. And it changed over time, though. What the value that it had for me initially was just to get around and to go.
Go fishing or in my cousin's pool. At one point, my cousins who lived in kind of a I don't know, it was a trailer with with some appendages built onto it. And I always loved going to their house because even though it's just kind of junk everywhere, they always had cool things like dirt bikes and four-wheelers and washing machines in the front yard. They had an above-ground pool and they would get fish from the local river and put them in the pool so you can fish in the front yard.
So, yeah, between fishing and bike riding, that was my kind of my early childhood. I just enjoyed being outside and doing. Doing whatever. I mean, you're, you don't, if you don't have a TV, you don't have video games, you don't have things to do inside, literally nothing to do inside.
So you end up. being outside, just finding things to do. Which was good. I I loved it. I I can't say that there's anything about my child that I would change.
Uh Uh And you're listening to Floyd Landis and his unique upbringing, and why he rode bikes, as he said, to reconcile what I was learning in church. From what I was learning in public schools. Oh. and to get around too to fish and play. and to, well, do things with his time because he couldn't watch T V.
and had no other modern means of communication. When we come back, More of Floyd Landis' story here. on Our American Stories. Lee Habib here, the host of Our American Stories. Every day on this show, we're bringing inspiring stories from across this great country.
Stories from our big cities and small towns. But we truly can't do this show without you. Our stories are free to listen to, but they're not free to make. If you love what you hear, go to ouramericanstories.com and click the donate button. Give a little, give a lot.
Go to ouramericanstories.com and give. This Labor Day, say goodbye to spills, stains, and overpriced furniture with washable sofas.com, featuring Anibay, the only machine washable sofa inside and out, where designer quality meets budget-friendly pricing.
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Now through Labor Day, get up to 60% off-site-wide at washablesofas.com. Every order comes with a 30-day satisfaction guarantee. If you're not in love, send it back for a full refund. No return shipping, no restocking fees, every penny back. Shop now at washablesofas.com.
Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply. The reviews and ratings are in, and Ice Cube's Big Three is the surprise hit of the summer. And to cap off the season, iHeart presents the Big Three Basketball Championship and eighth annual Big Three All-Star Game this coming Sunday, August 24th, live from Orlando. The remaining two teams fight it out for the Big Three Championship Dr. Jake Trophy in the most physical, fierce, and competitive basketball league in the world.
Don't miss the wild conclusion of Big Three's eighth and most historic season ever. This is the game no one wants to lose, and there's no crying in the Big Three. The action starts with the Big Three eighth annual All-Star Game. Don't miss All-Stars Dwight Howard, Montrez Harrell, MVP Michael Beasley, Lance Will Make You Dan Stevenson, Jordan Crawford, Craig Monroe, Earl Clark, Nazi Erkor, and more show you why they are the best three-on-three basketball players in the world. Big Three's exciting All-Star Game plus the crowning of a new Big Three champion.
The No Hold Spart action starts Sunday at 2 p.m. Eastern, 11 Pacific, only on CBS. Yeah. Good morning, welcome to Today. From back to school to tackling your to-do list, the Today Show is your best start to the day.
It's a new season and every morning. We're here to help you take it all off. As the forecast calls for football all across the country. Blockbuster stars, live concerts, and so much more. Wake up to where it's all happening.
We're getting back to all of it. And the best way to start is together. Watch the Today Show, weekday mornings at 7 a.m. on NBC. This is Danielle Fischel from Pod Meets World.
Parents, let's talk snacks. If your mornings look anything like mine, one kid's trying to pile drive a pillow and the other is trying to zip themselves into a backpack.
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Candice Rivera has it all. In just three years, she went from stay-at-home mum to traveling the world, saving lives and making millions. Anyone would think Candice's charm life is about as real as unicorns. But sometimes the truth is even harder to believe than the lies. Not true.
There's so many things not true. You've got to believe me. I'm Charlie Webster, and this is Unicorn Girl, an Apple original podcast produced by Seven Hills. Follow and listen on Apple Podcasts. And we return to our American stories.
Let's return to Floyd Landis. and where we last left off with him talking about growing up in a Pennsylvania Mennonite community. Here's Floyd. My first job I got was at a grocery store called Oregon Dairy. My sophomore junior and senior year, I had a job working till probably nine at night and then I'd get off and You know, early on, I'd ride around just to go hang out with my buddies.
But after doing a couple of small local races, that through this, there was a bike shop in Ephrida, which is a town right where I lived. Called Green Mountain Cyclery, and I got to know the guy, Mike, that ran it. Eric and I would stop in there and hang out and just kind of. Probably be the annoying kids at the bike shop trying to get them to work on our bikes for free. He convinced us to do this race that he was promoting nearby.
I was guessing it was 10 miles away or so from where the bike shop was there, probably 15 miles from my house.
So I wrote out there, this must have been like 1991 maybe. I rode out there on, it was on a Saturday, so I didn't have to get permission from my parents to try to race on a Sunday. They were completely opposed to that. I think they weren't. I knew better than to even ask.
Eventually, I just ended up doing it anyway, and they weren't particularly happy about it. But this race was on a Saturday, and so I rode out there. I won the race in like the junior beginner category, which probably might have been 10 people in it, if even that. But I felt like king of the world. Like, oh, I won this race.
And and I loved it. I loved the feeling of it just the race itself and and you know, I felt like I was some kind of champion for winning. And so that kind of got me hooked. I think that was the only race I did that year, but but throughout that winter I I spent a lot more time just kind of riding my bike rather than riding to for the sake of meeting up with my friends. Instead, we would go try to You know, get a workout, and so we'd ride often late at night after working at the grocery store, sometimes till midnight, one o'clock.
I remember my dad being suspect about the whole thing at one point. I must have been out till, I don't know, 12:30 or 1, and he never stayed out late ever. Because there was not, I mean, just that's not what you do, right? You go to bed when it's dark. And he came home about 10 or 15 minutes after me, and I was trying to figure out what he was doing.
I was like, Dad, where are you going? I finally, because he couldn't lie. I got him to admit that he had been following us around just to see what we were doing because he was convinced we were out just partying or who knows what, right? Doing something we shouldn't have been doing. But we really were just riding our bikes around to him for no reason at all.
I mean, to him, it didn't make sense, right? He couldn't understand it. My mom seemed more understanding of it. I don't know that she understood why I was doing it necessarily, but she didn't think there was anything, you know Wrong with it. My dad, on the other hand, just thought it was a complete waste of time.
we should be working and doing something useful with our lives rather than riding bikes around. Um, in hindsight, I guess there's reasons I could have listened to him and made my life easier, but But Um but yeah, it's it's addicting. Riding bikes is is addicting. Yeah, I don't know. If you don't understand it, you don't understand it, but if you do, man, there's nothing like it.
I remember the first day I got a pair of cycling shorts. I mean, I had never even worn shorts before this because, you know, even in school and gym class, my parents, in that area, there are some men like kids in the public schools. And so they'll give you an exemption for whatever. And so I didn't, I wore pants even in gym class or whatever we were doing in school.
So, I'd never even been outside in shorts before, and I've put these cycling shorts on, and I went like. To the woods nearby, I was riding my mountain bike. I went to these trails that I normally ride, and I remember feeling really self-conscious about it. There was nobody anywhere around that would have even seen me, but I just felt really awkward. Um I must have been I guess 15 or 16 years old, but I don't know.
I felt like... Kind of exposed just because I wasn't used to it, and on top of that, I've been, you know, kind of. taught that you're supposed to be modest and that It's inappropriate to wear shorts, let alone shorts that tight.
So it took me a while to actually kind of wear them around my family because I knew they were gonna make some comments about it. My oldest sister, the first time she saw them, said something like, Oh, is that the shortest tights they had? I was like, No, no, these are these are I started to try to explain to her that there is a reason for it for a second and then I realized that there was no way she was gonna be able to make sense of it and so I just decided I wasn't even gonna talk about it. which led to more mockery of the new wardrobe. Yeah.
I convinced my dad in my senior year in high school 1993, I guess. to take my buddy Eric and I And another friend of ours named Joel, that we some we were all kind of into writing. I was more into it than the others, but Eric was pretty much into it. As well. We convinced him to drive out to Traverse City, Michigan for the national championships.
But Yeah, I ended up winning the cross-country race for the junior national title. Because of that, I qualified for The World Championships, which the Bicycle Racing Association actually paid for all of the Travel expenses to go to France for the World Championships. And I had never been even on an airplane. Like I'd never I had no I was completely unprepared for even going to Michigan. I mean, that was the furthest I'd ever been from home.
And now all of a sudden I was I had to go get a passport. I had to go. Try to figure out how this, how I was going to navigate this. I don't speak French. I don't like it, this was all foreign to me.
And so when I got there, I To me, at this point, I had kind of Had this vision of bicycle racing that was going to be. other people that had kind of viewed it like me, like it this their Really obsessed with it and focused on it, and this is what they cared about, right? But really, what ended up happening, well, and I understand it now, but I didn't understand at the time. I got there, and it was a bunch of juniors. who didn't have the same sort of fixation on it that I did.
And so they were there to just like... drink and have a good time and party and I was completely caught off guard by that and I mean, I didn't really get very much sleep because the kid they put us in this These kids didn't like, they didn't sleep. I mean, they had, I guess they had jet light, they just decided to stay up and they would be out drinking all night because there's, I mean, in France, you can get alcohol if you're, you know, 17 if you want it. The whole thing was ended up being c Kind of traumatic for me because I didn't really understand. I wasn't, I'd never seen anyone.
drink alcohol before or partying or or any of these things or Well, it was completely foreign to me. Like, I just didn't know what I was observing. And I was having a real struggle doing it. And so by the time the race came along, I was not in a very good headspace. to function at all, let alone try to race.
I mean, I must have finished three hours behind the winner. I think I finished last. And I was just devastated. Like, I couldn't. At this point, all I wanted to do was just go home.
The rest of the juniors wanted to just kind of keep partying and go have a good time, and I just didn't want any part of it. I just went back and. Laid down in my room and didn't talk to anybody until I guess three days later and we went home, but. It took me a while and I I came back home, I I think two or three months, I didn't ride my bike and I kind of decided that wasn't for me. But in the end, after I had a few months off and started riding my bike again and enjoying it, I, yeah, I stuck with it.
And had a little bit better understanding what I was going to be surrounded by at bike races. I just kind of decided it was going to be an adventure at this point. I'm going to take it as it comes and I'll try to stay focused on the bike race, but there's probably going to be things that I'm going to have to manage in my head. And you're listening to Floyd Landis tell the story of growing up in this very Well, let's just say self-contained environment. Going to public school where, my goodness, his life changed dramatically.
And what he saw in life changed dramatically. And then, of course, this obsession with biking, not just your traditional obsession that most kids have. This one goes beyond to something.
Well, quite special. His father, of course, worried that his son was up to no good. followed him around only to find out, well, his son was indeed just Well, just biking, and that's it. Not thrilled with that though, not of really good use in the Mennonite's mind. Of, well, adulthood or adult time or preparation for adulthood.
But the father indulges the son in his trip to Paris for the Junior World Championship. Where he learns, he's thoroughly unprepared in many ways, many, many ways. And he comes home, takes some time off. Probably sulking a little bit. Just having been beaten by hours.
On end. And then came the renewal. And when we come back, We're going to learn more about Floyd Landis' story. and how he rose from really epic defeat. Is something else and something better?
The story of Floyd Landis continues. Here. on our American stories. This Labor Day, say goodbye to spills, stains, and overpriced furniture with washable sofas.com, featuring Anibay, the only machine washable sofa inside and out, where designer quality meets budget-friendly pricing.
Sofas start at just $6.99, making it the perfect time to upgrade your space. Anibay's pet-friendly, stain-resistant, and interchangeable slip covers are made with high-performance fabric built for real life. You'll love the cloud-like comfort of hypoallergenic, high-resilience foam that never needs fluffing and a durable. Steel frame that stands the test of time. With modular pieces, you can rearrange anytime.
It's a sofa that adapts to your life.
Now, through Labor Day, get up to 60% off site-wide at washablefas.com. Every order comes with a 30-day satisfaction guarantee. If you're not in love, send it back for a full refund. No return shipping, no restocking fees, every penny back. Shop now at washablesofas.com.
Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply. The reviews and ratings are in, and Ice Cube's Big Three is the surprise hit of the summer. And to cap off the season, iHeart presents the Big Three Basketball Playoffs. This Sunday at 3 p.m. Eastern, the remaining four teams battle it out for the right to make the Big Three Championship in the most physical, fierce, and competitive basketball league in the world.
The action starts with the Big Three Monster Energy Celebrity Game, where your favorite stars compete in Big Three 3 on 3 basketball. Then, the first of two semifinal games features Dwight Howard and the LA Riot taking on Montrez Harrell and Dr. J's first-placed Chicago Triplets. The finale will see popular Miami 305 with stars MVP Michael Beasley, and last will make you Dan Stevenson take on Nancy Lieberman's Dallas Power, who finished the season winning five straight weeks to capture second place. Can Glenn Rice, Greg Monroe, and Paul Milsap stop Miami's physical assault, or will Miami and Beasley put an end to Dallas's winning ways?
Who will make it to the Big Three Championship? This no-holds-bought action starts Sunday at 3 p.m. Eastern, 12 Pacific, only on CBS. Mm-hmm. Good morning.
Welcome to Today. From back to school to tackling your to-do list, the Today Show is your best start to the day. It's a new season and every morning. We're here to help you take it all off. As the forecast calls for football all across the country.
Blockbuster stars, live concerts, and so much more. Wake up to where it's all happening. We're getting back to all of it and the best way to start is together. Watch the Today Show, weekday mornings at 7 a.m. on NBC.
This is Danielle Fischel from Pod Meets World. Parents, let's talk snacks. If your mornings look anything like mine, one kid's trying to pile drive a pillow and the other is trying to zip themselves into a backpack.
Meanwhile, I'm trying to sign a permission slip with an eyeliner pencil because that's all I could find. That's why Mott's no-sugar-added applesauce pouches are perfect to have nearby. These things are clutch and are perfect for moments of stress. Made with real apples, no sugar-added, and the pouch? Genius!
It's mess-free and perfect for the car, the lunchbox, or after-school activities. This is a snack you can feel good about, and a good source of vitamin C, too. Just tasty applesauce your kids will actually want to eat. The other day, I handed one to my son mid-meltdown. He took a deep breath, squeezed the pouch, and suddenly he was.
calm. He had a tiny apple-powered moment of zen. Trust me, your future self will thank you. Motts. Real apples make real good applesauce.
Learn more at moths.com. There's something special about folks who come through without being asked. Like your coworker surprising you with your favorite coffee just because? Or your friend handing you the aux cable the moment you get in the car. No debate, no fight, just positive vibes.
That kind of love, it just hits different. And that's exactly the energy ATT is on with their new guarantee. If there's ever a network interruption, ATT will proactively credit you for a full day of service. No calls, no emails, no jumping through hoops, it's just handled. It's like the universe saying, I got you.
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We last left off with Floyd Landis coming to terms with a world outside of his very conservative and religious Mennonite Christian community. Accompanied by his friend Eric, Floyd set out to rise in the world of professional mountain biking. Let's pick up where we last left off. And so Eric and I were together most of the time, but at one point we split up. He needed to go home back to the East Coast.
And so he left me in Mammoth, California. There was a race. And so I hitched a ride with these guys. I can't remember how I ran into them. I might have been out riding the course or something before the race, and ran into these guys who were driving up to the next race in Washington State.
And they had this company called Show Em Your Nuts, which was At the time this was when um No fear was kind of the the big you know, brand that was this whole edgy, you know, no fear nonsense, you know. Edgy quotes and everything else. And so they thought that it would be cool to make a competing brand called Show Em Your Nuts, which was more of a play on words in a couple different ways. And they actually were nuts, that was the thing. Oh man, I so we we left, they had a trailer, like a pickup truck and a trailer, and I sat in the back seat of the pickup and we drove from Mammoth, California out through the desert.
And like halfway through the desert, I guess it was, we were following this other guy named, his name was Tattoo Lou. He had a van and he had like two pit bulls and he was covered in tattoos and he had his, he kind of lived in his van.
So he was driving along with these guys and they stopped in the middle of the desert and just started smoking wheel and getting high, like staring at the sky. And I, again, now I've never been around any kind of at this point, alcohol was traumatic for me to witness.
So now I'm sitting here thinking, man, these guys... Like, hopefully, they're not going to get back in their car and just drive. Like, I'm going to die. All I know about drugs is what I've been told in school: we're all going to probably die here.
So. They sit there and they stare at the sky, and they're trying to be philosophical. I'm thinking, man, you guys sound like idiots. But whatever, I'm here for the adventure at this point.
So I sit there and kind of. It kinda just take it all in. Then they get back in the car and we start driving.
So I'm like, alright, well, I'm just gonna lay down in the back seat because I guess this is how it ends. And so I just went to sleep. And I wake up six, seven hours later and we're, you know. the southern end of of Washington state.
So we get up there. They had like a booth that they set up in the expo area at the finish of the race. They said, all right, we're gonna go down to town and get some dinner. Do you wanna come along? And I said, no, I wanna, I just wanted to ride a lap of the course.
So, I don't know why I thought these guys would be reliable, but I figured they would come back up at some point after dinner. And so it got to be about I mean, I had I went for a ride and For maybe two hours, and it was getting dark, and it was getting cold. And I'm like, man, I don't know, there was no one else around. Like, everyone else had kind of left, and it wasn't.
Some of these races would be at a resort where you'd have lodging around the resort. This was pretty spread out, and there was nothing really anywhere near this. export area they had set up in this parking lot. And so I was getting cold, and I'm like, well, I'm gonna at least have to stay warm.
So I took down this power bar banner that they had on their booth and just laid down under it and I went to sleep. I didn't sleep very well, but I didn't, I mean, the time kind of passed. I guess I was half asleep and half awake because I was really cold. And they got back at five in the morning and they were like, man, what are you doing? I'm like, what do you mean?
What am I doing? You guys left me here. I guess it should have been obvious in hindsight. that this wasn't gonna go well. But that was the last time I hitched a ride with those particular guys.
I occasionally had to hitch rides after that, but. I have one of those guys. They were funny, I'll give them that. And they I had some good laughs with them, but If I needed to be serious and focus on the race, those were not the guys to be around. Cool.
The following night, I guess, the night after the race, it must have been Friday night or even Saturday night, because I stayed the whole weekend. And they had the Tour de France on, but it was one that Lance Armstrong won. To me, it was just this mythical thing. Because I, you know, obviously I knew at that point that the Tour de France was the biggest bike race and the biggest cycling event there was, but I didn't have any experience. Watching it, I'd never seen it on TV or didn't know much about it, but I just saw, remember seeing it and it having a kind of profound effect on me.
Thinking that, like, that looks like something where I'd have to deal with let's show them your nuts, people. Like, at this point, this is my goal. Like, I just need to get away from the show them your nuts people to a real professional sport where I can actually focus on what I'm doing.
So I guess I left Pennsylvania and I moved to Southern California. And so a couple of friends and I that we're also mountain biking who had done more road racing, just said, look, let's put together a small group. We'll do s we'll do a bunch of different races that you can enter as independent or not on the team, because road racing, depending on the category of the race, sometimes you have to actually be part of the team to be in it.
So, our goal ended up being just to try to make their braces as miserable as we could for the pro guys that are out there, just to see if we could get noticed. Yeah, so I guess in nineteen ninety seven went to a bunch of these races. And it got noticed by Team Mercury, which was Mercury the car company sponsored. At that point it was probably the biggest well, the biggest US team that wasn't sort of doing any races in Europe. And so I raced on on the Mercury team for I guess 99 and 2000 they um In 2001, the team put a bunch of effort into trying to kind of make it to the next level to the race in Europe.
And so I guess the first road race I did in Europe was called the Tour Lavigneer, which is like uh It's run by the Tour de France organization. It's a 10-day race. And I finished third, but that was kind of where I got noticed for. Yeah, or by the by the Postal Service at that time. And on this team, I mean by this time Lance had won three or four tours.
And he had a very, very strong team around him, so it wasn't like it was. It was easy for any one of those guys to make the tour team, and they were ruthless about it. They weren't. It wasn't about feelings. They just said, we're going to take the best eight guys that we have.
So, whoever that is, you're on the team. The first race I did with Lance would have been Okay. um Ruta del Sol or some some race they had in southern Spain and then Then we had a week off and then we went and did the Delphi Knight. Which is a big race that everyone does to kind of prepare for the tour. It's an eight-day race in France.
Um And because we had Lance on the team, obviously they're looking at Lance to be the leader of this particular race, and so there's opportunities for guys like me to try to go and breakaways. and make the race harder on the competition without Lance having to actually try to win. And I got in a good breakaway and I ended up Getting the lead in the race, and then I finishing second to Lance, who then beat me in the time trial.
So. That kind of sealed my tour qualification. And for that year and probably for much of the next year. Oh, it's pretty close to Lance. that year between uh the Rue del Sol and the And the Delphine, he took me back to San Moritz with him, and we trained together.
He got me an apartment up there. He had his family up there, and so we trained for those couple weeks between, and then we went back after the Delphine. trained right up to the Tour de France. Took a private jet to the start of the tour. It was good, man.
I was, yeah, living like how Lance liked to do it, which was. I mean, he had the resources to do it with much less stress than anyone else, right? And he did it. He was good at it. And so I had great training.
We had, you know, very little stress in those couple months leading up. And then the tour went pretty well. It was It's much, much harder than any other bike race. Partly because of the competition, everyone's in shape, right, for that race, because it's the most important race of the year. Especially if you're on the team with Armstrong, who was a superstar at this point, even outside of cycling.
It comes with all this other just. Just Stress of every kind, right? There's people around all the time. It's hard to sleep. But I was, you know, I was lucky that.
That I was on the The first time I ever did it, that I was on a team that won because No matter who you are in that race, it's three weeks long. You're gonna have days where you're just tired and want to quit. And it's just it's a lot easier to motivate yourself to keep going when you're winning the race. Yeah. And you've been listening to Floyd Landis and well, he'd been wandering around a bit.
When you find yourself following a guy named Tattoo Lou, into the desert. And you find yourself sleeping in the back of the car. hoping the guys pretty much stoned will get you to your destination. And maybe you have to have a change of teammates and a change of plans.
So he moves to Southern California and gets serious about this thing called biking. And ends up, of course. biking alongside the great Lance Armstrong. When we come back, more of this life story, this unusual journey from Mennonite, Pennsylvania, to the Tour de France. Here on Our American Stories.
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Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply. The reviews and ratings are in, and Ice Cube's Big Three is the surprise hit of the summer. And to cap off the season, iHeart presents the Big Three Basketball Playoffs. This Sunday at 3 p.m. Eastern, the remaining four teams battle it out for the right to make the Big Three Championship in the most physical, fierce, and competitive basketball league in the world.
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Who will make it to the Big Three Championship? This no-holds-bought action starts Sunday at 3 p.m. Eastern, 12 Pacific, only on CBS. Yeah. Good morning.
Welcome to Today. From back to school to tackling your to-do list, the Today Show is your best start to the day. It's a new season and every morning. We're here to help you take it all off. As the forecast calls for football all across the country.
Blockbuster stars, live concerts, and so much more. Wake up to where it's all happening. We're getting back to all of it and the best way to start is together. Watch the Today Show, weekday mornings at 7 a.m. on NBC.
This is Danielle Fischel from Pod Meets World. Parents, let's talk snacks. If your mornings look anything like mine, one kid's trying to pile drive a pillow and the other is trying to zip themselves into a backpack.
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Lance Armstrong. The next year, which would have been 2003. I was training in in January in And I was riding by myself and I crashed and I broke my hip. And it was broken pretty badly, it displaced pretty badly, and it needed surgery. And so I missed quite a bit of the spring season that year.
Yeah, I'm I made the team cut there, but I do think that had it been the year before, the year after, I might have actually not made the team. And we pulled it off, but man, it was that was the closest, I think, in all of his seven tours that he ever came to. To not winning the race, but he pulled it out. I mean, you can say a lot of things about Lance, but he's. Yeah, he's a bad when it comes to managing stress, and as an athlete, he's ex exceptional.
I mean, three weeks is a long, long time, even just in ordinary life. But when you're racing your bike 100 to sometimes 150 miles a day and sometimes through three or four large mountain passes over 120, 130 miles, I mean, some of these stages take seven hours long. Just even the winter would be seven hours. Three weeks feels like eternity when you're faced with that. And one thing you learn is that.
It's best not to look through the whole Tour de France route book. Just look at the stage right in front of you, and then don't look at what's tomorrow, even because. It's so hard and so stressful that you can easily intimidate yourself into being scared of actually finishing. I had a contract with the team that was expiring in. the end of 2004.
Eventually I just I wanted to l I I mean I wanted to leave the team. I didn't I probably would have stayed had they Had they given me any kind of assurance that Lance wasn't going to race another year, but I wanted to race and try to win the race myself. And they wouldn't. Make any public comment or any even internal comment about whether Lance was going to race and try to win seven. Because you have the record.
I mean, five was the record before that. And even only then, only one person had won five in a row. He just. Yeah, he couldn't help himself. There was too much money on the line, and so he did it one more year and he won again.
Uh but the problem was that by that time he was kind of He can be vindictive, so he was pretty bitter about the fact that I didn't stay on the team.
So He and the team went out of their way at most of the races that year just to race against me, to the point where sometimes they lost races just to make sure I didn't win. And so I ended up 10th in the Tour de France that year. For whatever reason, that's how he motivated himself. He. He was more motivated by making sure someone else lost than him winning, which.
I never did understand. To this day I don't understand, but That was kind of one of the quirks that he had. And then yeah, then the next year, 2006 was I think I left on Tuesday that week and I arrived in Paris on Wednesday. And then we started the race on Saturday. Yeah, and I mean...
There were some ups and downs in that race, but but all things considered, it went about as well as you could hope for. And it's, yeah, it was hard for me to get my head around because people were fired up. Like, I couldn't believe it even after I went. Like, I was happy, right? I just didn't realize that everybody was that.
Yeah, it's a good memory. But then obviously everybody knows the What happened next with the hold? the whole doping scandal that ensued and then Went through a couple years of litigation and fighting it and lost the title. There were some dark days for me. I didn't.
People asked if I would do it again, if I would take drugs again, and I don't know the answer to that. And it's not because I, out of some kind of defiance or anything else. I mean, that's what you had to do to win the race. In the end, I wish I could have just told the truth, but then my my problem there was There was no way to tell the truth without. to exposing the whole thing and then these are all people that are were my friends and people that I was around and it was not really in a position to Just try to tell that story without looking bitter myself, right?
It would just look it would look bad if If I just decided to admit it and then point at everyone else, it was a fight I had to fight. And I guess I should have probably just. I don't know. I guess I should have just vanished for 10 years, but... But I wanted to race again, and the only way to race is to deny it and follow the party line, right?
There was no way for me to admit that I had done that and ever expect to race again. And I wasn't ready to accept that it was over just like that, although I should have, because that really was the end of my career. But I wasn't ready to face that. I mean, I'd gone from the high point of my career to having to contemplate. Never racing again.
And I just made whatever decisions I thought. would at least give me the ability to possibly come back and race. But the problem was that it was the way it happened, and because I had was Armstrong's former teammate, and because of the... Spectacle of how I won the race, there was no way that I was ever gonna race again. I just wasn't prepared to accept that.
So I fought it for a while, a couple years, and and in the end probably made it made it harder to tell the truth but Once I finally had enough time to myself and time to reflect on everything. And also time to actually Feedback out in the world a little bit here and there, and have to try to face everybody. Every one of them, which would say, you know, we're sorry about what happened to you, we don't believe any of it. And I just. I realized that there's no way I was gonna be able to get through life like this.
I couldn't. This wasn't a story that was gonna go away. Like I... It wasn't like this was a lie that At some point, I could stop telling because no one's going to ask. That's just what it was going to be forever, and I couldn't manage it.
I just didn't. I either had to never talk to anybody again or just tell the truth so I could stop feeling so bad about it. And then I had the dilemma of, well, what does the truth mean? Like, what am I going to tell? Because if I.
If I just say well This is what I did. Everyone's going to know there was more to the story than that. There's no way I invented that. And so I struggled with what to do to the point where I finally just Was in such a bad place in my head that I didn't really care what else happened. I just decided I'm just going to tell the truth.
Here it is. Whatever happens, happens. I mean, I knew it was going to be bad. I knew what Lance would do, and I knew that I was going to have to defend all kinds of accusations of he's still lying and whatever else. But to some extent, I didn't care.
I just wanted to be able to say: okay, here are the facts. From now on, if people want to come up to me and say they hate me or they love me or whatever, at least I don't have to just keep lying about it. You can just tell the truth. And so I basically had to go through it a second time just to get the story out. And I think, you know, a lot of people kind of Probably more people saw that than saw the original bike race itself, just because of the magnitude of Lance and what he stood for, and to some extent still does stand for.
Some people couldn't separate the idea that he was inspirational because he had cancer from. from any of the rest of the story, and so some of them ended up hating me too. And some of them ended up hating him, which I think is unfortunate. I mean He's not exactly the nicest guy on earth, but but he paid a very dear price for the whole thing, probably more so because he is such a fighter, which is what made him admirable in the first place.
So the whole thing is a Paradox. But in that period of time I sort of kinda got my bearings on life and grew up a little bit and five, six years ago, started a company So, the name of the company is called Floyds of Leadville, and we decided to embrace the Leadville name because it's a A well-known sort of endurance sports, I don't know, Mecca, you could say. But the Floods of Level brand is primarily promoted as a. as a CBD brand. We sell it online through bike shops and running shops and convenience stores, things like that.
The CBD products are generally not psychoactive. Like, they don't have enough THC in it to be. to cause uh a change of mental state. But they do have anti-inflammatory properties and anti-anxiety properties. They help a lot of people with sleep.
It kind of helps your, just calm your thoughts. It allows you to fall asleep naturally. It helps me, which is why I was able to sort of convince myself that it would be a good idea to put my name on it. I'm not a great salesman if it comes to just selling something for the sake of. Trying to get the highest price, but it was something that really benefited me in those years after.
After the whole Tour de France debacle. help me manage pain and anxiety. And so it's a lot easier for me to just tell people: look, this helped me, just try it. It's not magic, but it does have. it does have real benefits for a lot of people.
And a great job on the production and the storytelling by Greg Hengler. And a special thanks to Floyd Landis for sharing his entire story. And my goodness, again. From a small insular community, the Mennonite community, to another small insular community. Because let's face it, once you start to enter into worlds like that, biking, I know my daughter does equestrian and it's a it's a small competitive community.
And my goodness, what happened with him and with the entire community in terms of doping. They all ended up doing it. And it's no excuse. I often wondered why they all just didn't do it. Because once one cheats and the next cheats and the next cheats, it's the new norm.
So why not just not cheat? But again, talk to anybody who biked during that era and everybody doped because everybody else was doping. And in the end, it caused a period of reflection for him. Ultimately, not telling the truth wore on Floyd more than helling it. And he finally did.
He just couldn't keep whine. about what he'd done. And in that period of time, he got his bearings. Got a new life. Started a new company.
something that would help with anxiety than inflammation. Floyd Landis' story here on Our American Stories. This Labor Day, say goodbye to spills, stains, and overpriced furniture with washable sofas.com, featuring Anibay, the only machine washable sofa inside and out, where designer quality meets budget-friendly pricing.
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Shop now at washable sofas.com. Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply. iHeart presents the Big Three Playoffs. This Sunday, the remaining four teams battle to make their championship in the most physical, fierce, and competitive basketball league in the world. The action starts with the Big Three Monster Energy Celebrity Game.
Then Dwight Howard and his LA Ryan take on Montrez Harrell and Dr. J Chicago Triplets. The finale will see popular Miami 305 with stars MVP Michael Beasley and Lance Stevenson take on Nancy Lieberman's Dallas Power, who will make it to the Big Three Championship. The no-holds bought action starts Sunday at 3 p.m. Eastern, 12 Pacific, only on CBS.
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Yes, JC Penny. If you eat too many ultra-processed foods, you could be starving your gut microbes, and they'll get hangry. That's one of many things I learned after working on a new audio course about the gut microbiome. You can learn how to keep your gut happy by listening to Try This from the Washington Post. I'm Christina Quinn.
I host Try This. Dig in with me on practical advice for life's common challenges. Follow Try This right now wherever you're listening. Seriously, try it. I'm Rodney Williams.
And I'm Travis Holloway. Welcome to the Wealth Break Podcast, a real conversation about finance. Let's be honest. Building WEF doesn't look the same for everyone. I feel like sometimes being broke is a cycle and that we might have to revisit that.
and we're not stopping at success stories. What happens when it doesn't go right? How do you cope with it? Because wealth isn't just about money. It's about creating a life where you thrive and help others do the same.
Listen to the Wealth Break podcast on the iHeartRadio app. This is an iHeart podcast.
