SYDNEY, Australia – The owner of the Bondi Boxing Club has recounted the sense of panic that overwhelmed he and his loved ones when they realised that their city was under attack from terrorists.
It was on December 14 when two gunmen killed 15 people and injured many more during a gathering in Bondi Beach to celebrate the first night of the Jewish festival Hanukah. A 10-year-old girl was among the victims; Australia’s confidence in its national security has also been widely threatened. One week on there is little question that a country’s psyche and its most celebrated city have been scarred.
Tony Del Vecchio, the head coach at and owner of the Bondi Boxing Club, is one of the stalwarts of his city’s fight scene. It was his gym Anthony Velazquez – Tim Tszyu’s opponent at the TikTok Entertainment Centre – and his trainer Hector Bermudez were using to finalise their preparations for the 157lbs catchweight contest on December 17.
Those close to Del Vecchio were therefore aware of his plans to head to Bondi Beach from his gym in nearby Waterloo on the evening of the shootings. It was a phone call from Mike Altamura, a long-term friend and incidentally Tszyu’s new co-manager, that changed his plans shortly before he had any awareness of the tragedy unfolding nearby.
Tszyu-Velazquez and the commitments Del Vecchio had made towards it were jeopardised by what happened while promoters No Limit considered the wisdom of a high-profile fight proceeding. It ultimately took place but after the final press conference had been cancelled, and in the same way that No Limit’s George Rose previously articulated, Del Vecchio captured the thoughts and feelings of so many of Sydney’s population when he reflected on what happened with a sense of disbelief.
“There’s a lot of friends that live out that way; a lot of phone calls were being made,” the trainer told BoxingScene. “At one stage you couldn’t get through making phone calls – obviously everybody was doing the same thing. I was on my way there.
“There’s a guy we train there in the mornings. He’s the head chef at a bar down there, 200m from where all this happened, and he’s got a new Spanish restaurant upstairs in a hotel. He said ‘Why don’t you come down?’. I’d just finished doing something at the gym; it was a great night, I was on the motorcycle and I thought ‘I’ll go out and say ‘Hello’’. One of my other friends, Mike Altamura funnily enough, had gotten off the plane and said ‘I’ve just landed at the hotel’, so I turned around and came back.
“Then my phone started going crazy, and it was my sister and people – ‘cause they knew I was on my there – saying ‘Are you at the Novotel?’. I said ‘I’m not going to that Novotel; I’m in the city’. She goes ‘Mate, have you seen what’s happened?’ I was helmet on; bike; ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about’. Then other friends said ‘Are you at the Novotel?’. ‘What?’. Then it came to light.
“It’s absolutely devastating. Then the next thing… I know a lot of people that live in Bondi, having been there for so long, and that panic sets in. Then friends were sending me videos. Not good – not good at all. I don’t know enough about it, but it just doesn’t seem like Australia. It’s surreal. It’s like it’s somewhere else.
“At the end of the night – I’d forgotten Hector [Bermudez] had gone out on a harbour cruise, just to go and see Sydney Harbour, and he sends me a message. He goes ‘What the fuck is this?’. ‘Are you okay?’ ‘Yeah we’re good; we’re back.’ ‘They’re assuming terror attack.’ He was nowhere near it, but this doesn’t happen in Australia. It’s pretty wild. Like the rest of the country, if not the world, we’re like ‘Woah, what’s just happened?’.
“I’ve got a kid [son Jonathan] who’s 26. He rang and said ‘Dad, where are you? Dad, tell me you’re not there’. ‘Mate, no, I’m good.’ I had to pull over and get my phone out and go, ‘What’s just happened?’. You can hear the panic in the voice, ‘cause I was meant to go there. I was just going to be in, out; I wasn’t going to stick around and go to dinner or anything like that. It was just a nice afternoon to go for a ride on a motorcycle. I’d just said ‘I’m going to the Novotel’, but I didn’t say which one, and they were a bit worried. Everybody who would have been there would have been getting phone calls.
“I just sit back and think about the ones that didn’t get the answers, and next they find out that their loved one’s been injured or even worse. It’s a bit of a shake-up. I have friends that were there and said it was so innocuous; [they heard] pops, and then they saw that and the amount of police, and realised ‘This is something serious’.”
Del Vecchio, whose reputation was built on his work with, among others, TJ Doheny and Linn Sandstrom, previously relocated his gym from premises in Bondi Junction to nearby Waterloo. A vigil was observed a week on at Bondi Beach in the latest demonstration of a nation in mourning. An anti-immigration rally was also staged earlier on Sunday, in a reflection of the anger that continues to pervade.
“It’s still a shock,” said Del Vecchio. “I’m old enough to have gone through, obviously, 9/11. [The bombings in 2002 in] Bali, for us, was very close back in the day – we lost 88 [Australian] people. So we’ve had it close, but never really close to home like that. Even the mass shooting in Tasmania [in 1996] – it wasn’t terrorism, it was ‘just’ a psycho. It’s like the next-door neighbour’s dog’s come in and ripped up your lawn – this doesn’t happen here.
“I know I’m thinking about it and I know I’m not happy with it either. I woke up [the next morning] and we had a very, very, very different landscape.
“It was the first day of Hanukkah; the beginning of one of their holiest festivals. [The threat of terrorism is perceived as] not here – that’s in another part of the world.
“We don’t have the issue down here – at least I don’t think we do. Has that changed now? I don’t know, but the holiest of religious days – when that happens…
“I’m trying not to assume things. I’m waiting for the truth to come out. But today’s a different day.”
