“BaaamBaaamBaaamm!“ His voice thunders, his eyes are hot coal, his fist hits an open palm.
Your heart rate jumps up from 130 to 200 in two seconds. It goes BaaamBaaamBaaamm! So intense, you think you’re going to pass out. It takes the breath out of you. Unbelievable. and horrifying in the first three seconds. Then it turns into something really indescribable. A rush. Adrenaline.
Manong Manoling can relax. Decathlete David Bunevacz is merely describing the perils and pleasure of … bungee-jumping.
The strapping Filipino-Hungarian athlete insists there’s not one game in the whole wide world of sports that he hasn’t yet tried.
“Ive done ‘em all” he beams, “bungee-jumping, free falling …” Now he makes a chocking sound that, we imagine, could only come from a man plunging 15,000 feet at 200 mph. He continues, “… with a parachute. Sky-diving.”
Danger, it seems, fuels every sinew and fiber in this body – 220 pounds of pure verve in a 6’4” frame.
Formidable is the figure he cuts on the race track, but just as intimidating is David Bunevacz, the interviewee, seated across a candle-lit dinner table.
He is often “misunderstood,” he is saying, perceived as brusque and brazen. He sighs: “They say, ‘David is sooo cocky when he talks about himself.’ But you know, when you’re going for the Olympic gold, you can’t say, Oh, I’ll give it my best shot. I might take it. I don’t know.’ If you have any doubts whatsoever, forget it, you’ll get nowhere.”
Confidence is vital, he stresses. ‘You have to be in tune with your body. You need confidence, unshakeable and immovable, sustaining your mind. Day in and day out, it has to be that way, even in practice. The moment you let up is the moment you lose, the moment you get hurt.”
David, racing just as feverishly on the highway of life, refuses to lose sleep over(mis-) perception about him.
“In time, people will understand,” he waxes philosophical. But he wants one thing clear. There is a world of difference between confidence and arrogance. “My kind of confidence is belief in what I can do. You’ll never hear me say: “this athlete or that is not half as good as I am.”
Confidence, consistency and, above all, compelling modesty are precisely the traits he admires in his sports idols: track-and-field Olympic medalist Carl Lewis, and basketball legend Michael Jordan.
Says David of the Chicago Bulls point guard: “it is not only because he is a great player, but also because he’s so consistent. You have to understand, to be a good athlete is hard enough. But to be consistently great, that’s phenomenal. That takes so much discipline and confidence.”
On both counts, self-control and chutzpah, David is himself phenomenal. His Spartan schedule would undoubtedly push you average Pinoy sportswriter to the edge of apoplexy.
“Decathletes follow a standard routine,” David relates. “work out five days a week, eight hours a day, 10 a.m to six p.m. just like a regular job.”
But, unlike most nine-to-fivers, decathletes don’t stop for lunch, “We drink lunch – liquid protein.”
Sounds awful.
“It’s okay,” he assumes us. “It takes like chocolate.”
In Los Angeles where he spends a good part of the year, he jogs 400 meters up a steep hill, followed by high-impact aerobics and intense stretching. Bench presses, sit-ups, leg curls, pull-ups, three sets of 150 push-ups, weight-lifting 150 kilograms.
Only after such strenuous aperitif could he then embark on the nitty-gritty training for the decathlon events. For the uninitiated, decathlon dubbed by the politically incorrect as “the sport for real men,” consist of 10(!) events.
The first day starts with the 100m, long jump, shot put, high jump and ends with the 400m. The second day kicks off with the 110m hurdles, discus, pole vault, javelin and culminates with the 1,500m.
“Because there are 10 events, there are so many things to work on,” David clarifies. “on top of that, you have to train for endurance.”
A normal day for the decathlete begins at 8:30. “I drink my breakfast, same protein drink. By 9:30, I’m on the track.”
Asked what he does outside of training, he quips: “nothing. The three times a week that I have weight-training and physical therapy (massage), my day ends 8:30 p.m. On the days I don’t have physical therapy and weight-training, I can go to the movies. By 9:30, I’m home eating dinner, watching TV- David Letterman, Melrose Place, Friends.”
Lights out is 10 p.m. “I make it a point to get eight to 10 hours of sleep. Lack of sleep can cause cramps.”
He’s been
Grossly misunderstood, but
He has little time to fret about cramps,
whether in the legs or in his heart.
To conquer cramps, the athlete’s curse, he counsels, “Drink lots of water.”
“Every single day it’s the same routine,” he affirms. In David’s very orderly world, everything is on sked, everything is perfect, there is no time for the inconsequential, like cramps.
Really. The couch potato would be quick to dismiss an athlete’s rigid regimen and exacting existence as boring.
“No.” David is just as fast on the draw. “ I love to be out on the track!” He brims with pride when talk quite inevitably turns to his team-mates in UCLA.
“How can it be boring when you are training with Quincy Watts, an Olympic gold medalist? I am hurdling side by side with Greg Foster, four-time World Champion. We’re five in the group: Quincy Watts, double gold medalist for the 400m in Barcelona (’92); he’s a superstar. Robert Redding, 110m hurdler ranked number one in the United States. Greg Foster, four-time world champ in the 100m. And Keddrick James, 400m hurdle specialist, the same event Edward Moses specialized in. There are the men who are going to Atlanta for the United States.”
More than great athletes, his teammates are “lots of fun to hang out with.” And of course, training with the world’s best punches him to the limit.
For Manila games, dood friend and athlete Chris Warner flew over from States. “When you work with other people,” David elaborates, “when you run with someone on the track and you get into the rhythm of his stride, it carries you along. It’s almost how far can you go.”
To watch him train is to behold a man who genuinely loves to sweat. He relishes each bead forming on his brow, as if each salty drop were a gold medal.
Under the glare of the midday summer sun, David, accompanied by Chris, burns the Rizal Memorial Coliseum tracks.
The scorching heat is the least of his worries, though. “Pollution is so bad, It’s almost like you’re eating smog.
“In LA, we train in absolutely beautiful weather. 70 degrees, 20 percent humidity. Just last week, my teammates and I were seating on the tracks, shooting the breeze: My God everything’s just perfect”.
David the optimist see in challenges a chance to develop further as a sportsman. Despite the sun and the smog, he still declares, “Manila is better.”
Relentless he is in courting his mother’s countrymen.
David Joseph Ismael Bunevacz, bold and beautiful, has been a favorite target of the local press for the past year.
Summer ’95, controversy erupted over the P1.1 million allowance given to him by the Philippine Sports Commision.
VITAL SIGNS
Name: David Joseph I. Bunevacz
Birthdate: December 20 1968
Birthplace: Torrance, California
Height 6’4’’
Weight: 220 lbs
100m : 10.96 sec.
Long jump: 7.15 m
Shot put: 18 m
High jump: 1.98 m
400m: 49.91 sec.
110m: 15.50 sec.
Discuss: 48.20 m.
Pole vault: 4.00 m.
Javelin 75.25 m
1500m: 5 mins. 10 sec.
Decathlon: 7520 points
OTHER IMPORTANT FIGURES
Neck: 17 ½
Jacket size: 46
Sleves:35 ½
Waist:34
Length of pants 36
Shoe size 12 inches
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