Matthew Sronce

Born in 1975 in Wharton, Texas.

So my last really bad crash was in Tennessee. I was coming, as we call it, on the run down, on the straight run back. You come straight down that rundown, you cross the timing line, then you need to roll out right or left. My, what I always do is a horse has a lead. They’re either in the right lead or left lead. So as I came around, I was in a left lead. So in that instance, I wanted to turn left and stop him. You don't want to come straight down and just stop. That's hard on a horse. You want to round out, as we call it. Well, the out gate was to the right. The in gate was to the left. He knows which way he's going out, but I wanted to turn to the left. The last second he went to change leads and I caught him and he tried to change back, hit his front feet. We went end over end.

So that resulted in a very bad shoulder break. I think three or four, compression fractures. I broke three spinous process bones in my back. Concussion. Knocked out. Surgery the next Monday. So you have some significant wrecks.

But, a lot of people have a wreck like that, they don't come back and run hard. I don't have that. I don't know why. In my mind, I'm like, well, I had my wreck. I'm good to go now. I'm not going to have another one for a while. So now I'll run harder. I don't have that fear. Now, it's not that I don't have fear. You’re not going to get me to bungee jump. I'm too scared to do something like that. But I'll run a horse as fast as it'll go in that arena. No fear of that. I can wreck right now and not get hurt. And I'll come to the next run, I'll run just as hard or harder. I don't have that fear.

But like I said, you’re not going to get me to jump off something with a rubber cord tied to my feet. I won’t even ride a roller coaster. Weird. It's just how people are wired, I guess.