Although a BMX accident left Mario Bonfante a quadriplegic, the
Gilroy racer knew he’d be returning to the track one way or
another
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GILROY
Mario Bonfante, Jr., pushes his wheelchair out of his bedroom, through a narrow hallway and into the adjacent kitchen, and opens a nearby garage door before rolling down an accessible ramp into a cluttered room of spare parts and bicycles, a symbol of his past.
It’s not a struggle for the 21-year-old. It just takes a little longer than what he prefers.
“I’ve never gone this slow in my life,” he said. “I’m kind of having withdrawals.”
Speed is an important part of Bonfante’s life; it always has been. He was on the fast track to a career in motorcycle racing when, as he says, everything came to a sudden stop.
The former speed racer hasn’t been on a bike for more than four years, not since a big-air jump gone bad landed him in the hospital, and later a wheelchair as a C6 quadriplegic, all but ending what was expected to be a promising career on the street-racing circuit.
He had earned his pro license in less than a year and had just applied to the American Motorcyclist Association for his card, relinquishing the Rookie of the Year award he would have won as a novice racer, just so he could turn pro a little sooner, a little faster.
He even had a leather racing suit specially tailored, adorned with the names and logos of his sponsors, ready to go for the following season in what would have been his pro debut.
But he was able to wear the suit just once.
For all of the physical changes Bonfante has experienced in the last four years, though, nothing has changed as far as his goals are concerned, and nothing has really changed for what he has always wanted to do in the first place.
He says there isn’t anything that is going to hold him back, either, and one look inside the garage of his Gilroy home shows just how serious the 21-year-old actually is.
Elevated four feet off the ground in a nearby corner of the garage is Bonfante’s future — a specially made go-cart that includes a push-handle steering wheel he created. Able to Velcro his hands to the wheel, Bonfante, who is paralyzed from the nipple line down with “no use” for his hands, can push one side of the steering wheel for the gas, push the other side to brake.
He plans on racing it in the upcoming months, and for the first time will return to the track that he fell in love with when he was just 7 years old.
“I had to design it my own way, with my own strengths,” said Bonfante, who will be new to the sport of go-cart racing. “I just can’t wait to get back out there and go fast again.”
Promising Career
After receiving his first bike when he was 7, Bonfante advanced through several stages of racing early on, and was initially thinking he’d turn pro in motocross before eventually deciding on road racing after his step-dad, Chris Tripp, helped transform his Honda 600 motorcycle. He took it out onto the track one day to see how far he could push it, and never looked back.
“I fell in love with it, and the doors started to open a lot quicker,” he said.
Attending Gilroy High his freshmen year, Bonfante instead took up independent studies because he was on the road traveling so often. He finished first at Las Vegas in a Western Eastern Roadracing Association event, and took first place at Miller Motorsports Park in Utah in another WERA event, among other accolades in 2006.
Later that year, through the American Federation of Motorcyclists at Thunderhill Raceway Park in Willows, Bonfante finished second and fifth in the 600 super bike and 600 production divisions in June and July, respectively.
“My career was starting to take off. Then it kind of took a little turn,” Bonfante said.
How it all transpired for Bonfante still isn’t entirely clear. But the racer remembers being invited out to Christmas Hill Park on Sept. 15, 2006, to try out some dirt jumps with friends, even though he hadn’t done much BMX riding in roughly two years.
Bonfante recalls his first jump. He went really high, he said, and was forced to toss his bike before finishing the jump, perhaps bruising his heel on the landing. After watching his other friends complete the series, though, Bonfante decided to give it another try.
This time, with a little more speed, Bonfante took off.
“All I remember from there is going over the bars,” he said. “When I woke up, I was face first on the ground.”
And fearing a neck injury, no one wanted to touch Bonfante, who, despite being in no pain, said he could neither move nor see. He actually recalls the whole experience from above, too, like he was watching a movie of it happen in some sort of out-of-body experience.
“It was pretty devastating,” Tripp said. “A lot of it happened so fast. Just him being OK was our No. 1 concern.”
While fracturing his C4 and C5 vertebra, doctors were forced to rebuild his C6 out of titanium, leaving Bonfante a quadriplegic. He lost 35 pounds in the two days following the accident, and later moved down to San Diego to begin an intensive rehabilitation process.
It took him three years to return to, what he says, “as normal a life as possible.” It’s just lived a little differently now.
Without the use of his legs and hands, Bonfante now calls his biceps and shoulders his “money-makers.” And instead of building a respective racing career in order to develop a business model geared toward starting his own racing team, Bonfante will simply reverse the order of what he had already planned his life out to be.
“It’s unfolding a little bit different, a little backwards,” he said. “I just wanted to be an example for the kids, just to show them that if you keep your nose down and stay out of trouble, you can do anything you want.
“The only boundaries that we’re confined by are the ones we create in our minds.”
Cloud 9
The hardest part of it all, of course, at least for Bonfante, was being forced to hand over his racing career so fast — almost as fast as it started. With his backup career as a contractor out due to his condition as well, Bonfante attended Palomar Community College in San Marcos and later earned his certification in AutoCAD, which helped him build the steering controls for his go-cart.
“I didn’t think it’d be that different. But everything in life happens for a reason,” Bonfante said. “I’m just rolling with it, literally.”
Emblazoned on the bumper of the go-cart is Bonfante’s next creation — Keep Em Spinnin Racing, which is the first phase of the Gilroy native’s extensive business plan called Cloud 9, a facility he’s looking to create that would be part school, part training facility, part learning experience for any and all aspiring racers, no matter the vehicle; a place to be run by the athletes, for the athletes.
Keep Em Spinnin Racing would be the racing team out of Cloud 9, and would act as a promotional tool for the academy Bonfante is planning. He sees it positioned on 400 acres, with personal training and race training available, with classes in art and design offered, and with additional programs tailored to adaptive athletes.
“All I wanted to do was to get paid to do what I love,” Bonfante said of his racing career. “And I want to present a plan where [racers] can do what they love, taking life for all it has to offer.”
Bonfante, who is also in the field of motivational speaking now, plans on presenting his ideas to industry investors in the near future.
“It’s my whole life in my head,” he added. “I just want to present it to somebody else.”
Along with his go-cart, Cloud 9 and the Keep Em Spinning Racing team, it was perhaps a question of when, not if, Bonfante would return to the track. Although he said going out to Christmas Hill Park that one day in 2006 was “stupid,” especially with how his career was developing up until that point, Bonfante doesn’t have any regrets.
Again, speed is an important part of Bonfante’s life. It always has been, and it always will be.
“You can’t live your life in a box and be afraid of what’s gonna happen,” he said. “I wouldn’t have changed a thing. I enjoy every day of my life. I just lived it a little too fast.”
For more information on Mario Bonfante, go online to: www.keepemspinnin.com
