HOUSTON – It's the fall seen around the world.
Chuck wagon driver Gary Sandstead was thrown into the spotlight last year after he was thrown off his wagon in front of a live audience at the 2016 Houston Rodeo.
"I've been thrown off a lot of horses, but never, kind of like I did there. So it was a big mistake," Sandstead said.
The hit was hard -- his body rolled several times before finally coming to a stop. Nobody knew what happened.
"I think there was a time there when I had a little bit of slack in the lines and it just let me lose my balance. I reached with my knee to brace myself, and I just couldn't catch it. It happened so quickly," Sandstead said.
Sandstead laid motionless in the seconds before help arrived, but the damage had been done.
"I had eight broken ribs and it was pretty painful, actually," Sandstead said.
Along with the broken ribs, he suffered a broken shoulder and a punctured lung. He laid in a Houston hospital for a week before finally going home to Colorado.
There, he was in bed for more than a month.
But he was back on the wagons again three months later, riding in the Fort Worth Rodeo.
That rodeo rider says he's been racing horses since he was a kid. He says there's nothing that will ever take the reins out of his hands for good.
"I've just kind of been doing the basic adrenaline junkie thing, pretty much my whole life," Sandstead said.
And now you'll see him again in the 2017 Chuck Wagon Races.