Matz not your average Derby contender trainer
55-year-old feels 'fortunate and thankful' to have survived plane crash
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BOYNTON BEACH, Fla. - As he embarks on the road to the Kentucky Derby, trainer Michael Matz is asked not about his horse, Barbaro, or his Olympic silver medal in equestrian or his selection as the U.S. flagbearer for the closing ceremony at the 1996 Atlanta Games.
Instead, he is asked to relive the horror of United Airlines flight 232, which cartwheeled down the runway and broke apart in an Iowa cornfield 17 years ago. Of the 296 passengers and crew, 184 somehow survived.
“I feel very fortunate and thankful that we were OK,” Matz said recently at Palm Meadows Training Center, where he is preparing Barbaro for next Saturday’s $1 million Florida Derby at Gulfstream Park. “That’s all you can be. You go on with life.”
When the flight from Denver to Chicago crashed in Sioux City on July 19, 1989, Matz was upside down in the middle section, strapped in by his seat belt.
Pilot Al Haynes, hailed as a hero for maneuvering a plane with virtually no controls, had told the passengers they were in for a rough landing: “I’ll count 4-3-2-1 before we hit,” Matz recalled him saying.
“I looked out the window and at ‘2’ we were still really high,” he said. Just before “1,” the right wing dipped and hit the ground, flipping the plane over and over before it broke into three pieces.
“Everybody unbuckled their seat belts and fell” to the ceiling, Matz said.
His first thoughts were for the three children sitting near him who were traveling alone. His fiancee, D.D. Alexander, was sitting six rows ahead.
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Groping through thick smoke and a tangle of wires, Matz told the kids to hold his belt as he led them out an opening in the fuselage. When a fellow passenger heard a baby crying, he and Matz ran back into the horror from which dozens of people still were trying to escape. They followed the sound to a luggage compartment and pulled out an 11-month-old baby girl.
Outside again, amid the burning wreckage and dead bodies, Matz searched frantically for Alexander. The smoke grew thicker and Matz feared there would be an explosion. Forty-five minutes passed, and Matz, hanging onto dwindling hope, looked up as a rescue truck passed. There, sitting with the three children he had led to safety, was Alexander.
“Seemed more like four hours,” Matz said.
“It was very gut-wrenching and painful and scary,” Alexander said. “It was huge sense of relief to find him.”
One of the top equestrians in the world, having competed in the 1976 Olympics, Matz was on his way home to Collegeville, Pa., at the time of the crash. Two weeks later, he was competing again and would win the $75,000 Hampton Classic Grand Prix later that summer. He and Alexander married and had four children, but things were not quite the same, nor would they ever be.
“When something like that happens, you really realize not to sweat the small stuff,” Alexander said. “Family and friends are the most important things in life. Both of us have always been pretty focused on what we do and have done things passionately. But it really makes you realize there are things you deal with on a day-to-day basis that get you upset but are trivial.”
Matz, who won his silver medal in team jumping at the ’96 Atlanta Games, retired from riding four years later. He turned to training full time and is based in Fair Hill, Md., and Delaware Park. His biggest success was Kicken Kris, who won the 2004 Arlington Million.
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