For Immediate Release
Catherine Pappas
Public Relations, The Ictus Initiative
617-717-8294
Catherine@IctusInitiative.com
CAPTAIN OF 2004 US OLYMPIC FENCING TEAM NAMED CELEBRITY GURU
LifeTips.com Awards Jeff Bukantz Celebrity Status and Promotes His New Book
Livingston, NJ, October 4, 2006-LifeTips.com, an online one-stop-shop that provides its viewers with tips on everything from dating and nutrition to investing and franchising has recently added a new member to its family of Celebrity Gurus, Jeff Bukantz.
Known for providing readers with unbiased advice for everyday questions, LifeTips.com continually seeks out authors and celebrity experts to provide content for the site. After the recent release of his new book, Closing the Distance: Chasing a Father's Olympic Fencing Legacy (Acanthus Publishing 2006), LifeTips.com welcomed Jeff Bukantz on as the Celebrity Guru of Fencing. When asked about his involvement, Bukantz responded, "Champions will find their gold medal ideas at LifeTips. It is a great resource, and I am thrilled and honored to be a part of it."
Some of Bukantz's tips include: Play the odds at crunch time, Develop your homerun move, Stop the bleeding (timely time outs), Fence the ref, and Pre-competition sleep habits. Bukantz also uses this forum to repeat his trademark message: "It's not the destination but the journey." He writes, "We all focus on the destination, which is hopefully the medal podium at the end of the day. Visualizing yourself on that podium is healthy, but you've got to learn to enjoy the journey, as well. The competition is both a test and a reward. You have trained and sacrificed to get to this point, and you have to appreciate the effort you have put forth. Appreciate the victories, learn from the mistakes, and enjoy the competition."
In addition to recognizing Bukantz as a celebrity, LifeTips.com also promotes Closing the Distance. This book, available on LifeTips.com, Amazon.com, and Jeff Bukantz's website (www.JeffBukantz.com) details Bukantz's struggle to follow in his father's Olympic fencing footsteps. Never the natural athlete his father was, Jeff had to learn how to beat his opponents by out-thinking them and using "outdated" strategies to surprise and out-fence them.
On LifeTips.com, Jeff provides insight into the way he approaches a match: "In fencing, if the score is 4-4, 14-14, or 44-44, the next touch wins. Since you have battled to reach the ultimate touch, you have to put the odds in your favor … you must go with your best action, plain and simple. It is best to have two options, one offensive and one defensive. However, the defensive action cannot be passive. If you decide to go on the defense, set it up with the intention to turn the defense into an offense. The rule of thumb is that the attacker will score about 70 percent of the time. So, you do the math, especially on the deciding touch."
About Jeff Bukantz
Jeff Bukantz was the captain of the 2004 U.S. Olympic Fencing Team and a former top-ranked medalist in the sport. At the Athens Olympics, Jeff led his team to the first gold medal in fencing for the United States in one hundred years, and their first medal of any kind since 1984. Like his father Danny, Jeff was a dominant contender in the sport, generally ranking 5th or 6th in the country. He qualified for the 1981 World University Games Team and the 1983 and 1987 World Championship Teams. In 1987 he competed at the Pan American Games, where he won a bronze medal for the U.S. Team. He also won eight U.S. National Foil Team Championships for the New York Fencers Club and a gold medal at the 1989 World Maccabiah Games.
Jeff's journey to become an Olympian like his father was long and difficult as he was the third alternate for both the 1984 and 1988 Olympic Games. In 1984 he refereed at the Olympic Games in Los Angeles, and in 1996 at the Men's Individual Foil Finals in Atlanta. On December 26, 2003, Jeff received word that the US Fencing Association had selected him to captain the 2004 US Olympic Fencing Team - an honor he had wanted to share with his father for over 30 years.
Jeff is a member of the International Fencing Federation (FIE) Rules Commission, the United States Fencing Association (USFA) High Performance Committee, and Chairman of the USFA Fencing Officials Commission.
Jeff was raised in Queens, NY and currently resides with his wife and two children in Livingston, NJ.
For more information, please visit Jeff's website at www.JeffBukantz.com. To schedule an interview or to request a review copy, please contact Catherine Pappas at 617-717-8294 or Catherine@IctusInitiative.com.
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