Winner's circle is place for a hero

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- Some guys win the Kentucky Derby and their life is never the same.
That won't happen to Michael Matz.
Keeping things in perspective was not a problem for the 55-year-old trainer and never will be. The man was a bona fide hero before he ever set foot on the grounds at Churchill Downs, long before a strapping bay colt named Barbaro caught the leaders at the top of the stretch and roared home 61/2 lengths clear of the field.
By then, Matz was already a sports hero, too -- as if there's any comparison -- several times over.
Nearly 17 years ago, he led three kids out of the burning fuselage of a plane that crashed in an Iowa cornfield, having the two youngest hold onto his belt and the third follow close behind. Then Matz and another passenger waded back into the smoking hulk, tracking the cries of a baby, and pulled an 11-month old girl out of a luggage compartment.
Accomplishments
Seven years later, in his third and final Olympics, Matz won a silver medal in equestrian and then was chosen by his teammates to carry the U.S. flag for closing ceremonies. Flush with victory Saturday, he was not about to rank those experiences in any order.
"They're all very different," he said, "but all very exciting."
In a nice bit of serendipity, the two brothers, Travis and Jody Roth, and their sister, Melissa Radcliffe, were in the grandstands when Barbaro steamrolled 20 other horses en route to his win. None of it, not the perfect ride by Barbaro or the quiet, almost-gentle way that Matz chose to celebrate, qualified as a surprise.
"It's like we almost expect amazing things from him," Jody Roth, now 31, said, "no matter what he does."
Yet, on a day made for bragging, Matz would have none of it. That didn't surprise anybody who knows him, either.
On flight 232, two of the kids sat on either side of him, the third close by, and they struck up a conversation. By then, Matz had already ridden in his first Olympics, in Montreal in 1976. But all Melissa Radcliffe remembered him saying about a career was that he "was just a guy who likes horses."
Love story
All week long on the backstretch, reporters tried to draw Matz out about that story, and when he complied, he did so reluctantly. One of the sweeter tangents is that Matz's fiancee at the time, D.D. Alexander, who was also on the plane, became his wife not long after.
"It's something we don't discuss very much, my wife and I, even after it happened," Matz recalled during the run-up to the Derby. "We didn't discuss it. We tried to say it's finished and that's it. Luckily, both of us don't have nightmares about it."
The one thing Matz was happy to talk about Saturday was his unusual training schedule for Barbaro. He came under heavy criticism for scheduling only one prep race in the 13 weeks before the Derby, a lesson he carried over from his equestrian days. Desperate to qualify for the Olympics in 1976, Matz rode his horse into the ground. He made the team, but the mount had so little left, Matz never reached the podium.
Cornerstone
The trainer in him never forgot that. Instead, it became the cornerstone of an even grander plan to point Barbaro down the path to a Triple Crown.
"If we've made a mistake," Matz said, "we'll know in two weeks. But that was the plan all along."
Jim Litke is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press.
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