Hard Knocks : Tom Bonacci Has Had His Share of Bumps and Bruises, but With Them Came Success

It wasn’t that long ago that Tom Bonacci’s fastest motor was his dog, Spike.

Bonacci would lasso Spike and the dog would take off, towing Bonacci on a skateboard around their Brea neighborhood.

“If somebody threw a rope around your neck and said ‘Pull me’, you’d run away,” said Bonacci’s father, John. “But the dog couldn’t wait to do it.”

If Spike could see Bonacci now.

Spike, who was part bulldog, part German shepherd, is gone--he died about three years ago. And gone, too, are the days when Bonacci rode around in a $100 car with the top cut off and his Kawasaki Jet Ski hanging out of the back seat.

These days, Bonacci travels to Budweiser Jet Sports Tour races via airplane, all expenses paid from the prestigious team Westcoast Sea-Doo, which he joined this year. Bonacci’s Sea-Doo boats travel to meet him at the races in a specially equipped truck.

In Jet Sports Tour races, riders maneuver around a course marked by buoys. The boats are technically called personal watercraft, although most know them by a brand name, Jet Ski.

Bonacci is fourth in the point standings in the most popular racing class, the Pro Runabout 785 and he will compete at Jet Jam ’96 beginning today in the river complex next to the Pond of Anaheim.

Bonacci, 1995 world champion in the pro sport class, has found the life of a top rider carries a price. When he is not traveling to events, he is helping Sea-Doo with research and development or exercising. He rarely relaxes for more than a few minutes at his home in Costa Mesa before jumping up and pacing, worrying about how to make his next performance better.

“I have a $2,500 Italian leather couch and I have sat on it 10 times,” he said. “Before, when I lost a race the only one I had to answer to was myself. Now, I have at least 50 people who are involved in what I do out there on the track. [After a loss] I have to come back and apologize and answer to 50 people. I have to sleep with that--that 50 people worked [hard] and then I go and fall off. I don’t know how that sits in other people’s guts but it doesn’t sit in mine very well.”

Bonacci, 28, does all he can to avoid that feeling--including racing injured. So often has Bonacci raced with broken limbs and stitches that he has been called “Rambo.” What’s more, Bonacci’s propensity for getting injured is almost eerie.

At a competition in Dallas in June, Bonacci was holding the pole of a tent when a sudden storm lifted the tent and sent Bonacci flying.

“If I knew that [the storm] was coming, I would have gone in the truck and hid because I’m notorious for getting hurt,” he said.

He only sprained his wrist--small potatoes compared to some of Bonacci’s injuries.

In 1989, Bonacci fractured five vertebrae and ruptured a disc after a competitor ran into him in a freestyle competition.

“He drilled me right in the back and kept going,” said Bonacci, who never discovered who did it. “The guy is just an ice-veined, cold-blooded human being.”

The accident kept Bonacci off a boat for the next few months, but in his first race back he won the expert division 550 Class world championship. Two years later, in 1991, Bonacci jumped to the pro division.

By 1993, Bonacci was rolling--he won his first pro event in Virginia Beach and was given a sponsorship by Yamaha.

But only two weeks before the 1994 Jet Sports Tour began, Bonacci was riding a bike in the Florida Keys, where a car, traveling about 50 mph, hit him from behind.

“I woke up in the ambulance. I was a mess. I looked like I got run over by a steamroller. I was bummed,” he said. “The next thing you know, [the driver] didn’t have insurance, the car wasn’t hers. I had to pay for all the medical bills, so two weeks later, I just had to race.”

Bonacci showed up for the opening round of the Jet Sports Tour in San Diego with stitches in his hand, shoulder and face and duct tape over his cast. He finished fourth.

“The kid just has such a big heart. I guess he rides his best when he is hurt,” John Bonacci said. “As half a man he is still keeping up with the rest of them.”

John Bonacci and his wife, Joanne, have been boating enthusiasts for years and Tom followed suit. When Tom was 5, John would hitch his boat to the bank of the Colorado River and toss his son out the back with a rope. Tom surfed in the current.

Bonacci’s childhood activities also included motocross, surfing and snowboarding. After graduating from Brea Olinda High in 1987, Bonacci took the money he earned from working in construction, as well as money his parents promised him for a graduation trip, and bought a his first personal watercraft--a Kawasaki Jet Ski.

About a year later, Bonacci entered a small competition in Mexico. Even though it was the first time he had ever ridden in the surf, he won.

“It came real natural. I went out there and I was smoking everybody,” he said.

This weekend, the normally dry Santa Ana River bed next to the Pond will be filled with about 15 million gallons of fresh water for Jet Jam ’96. It is the last chance for Jet Sports Tour riders to gain enough points to qualify for the Skat-Trak World Finals at Lake Havasu in October.

Bonacci is expected to do well. He has won two of the last four events, at Richland, Wash., and at Pontiac, Mich. Bonacci was in the lead at two other recent events, at Des Moines, Iowa, and Chicago, but fell.

“I was there, going fast and I choked and fell off the boat a couple times,” he said. “The times I didn’t choke, I won.”

Spike would be proud.

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Jet Jam ’96

* What: Personal watercraft competition, music, exhibits, food.

* When: Friday-Sunday

* Where: Santa Ana Riverbed, next to Anaheim Pond

* Cost: General admission is $5 for children, $12-$15 for adults; admission and reserved grandstand seating is $5 for children, $12-$25 for adults.

* For information: (714) 740-2000