They call it The Eight

By Glenn Collins Via: Ny Yimes

"For in the sparkly, scary, noisy and smoky universe of the Globe of Death, eight would be the record-breaking number of motorcycle riders circling at more than 40 miles an hour in a 16-foot-wide steel sphere. The Eight would be the next thing in this classic circus thrill act, whose century-long history has paralleled the evolution of the motorcycle itself.

The veteran Torres family hopes to achieve The Eight in New York, but perhaps not Thursday, when the 138th edition of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus opens at Madison Square Garden.

“But it will come soon, since this is all about our pride,” the troupe’s leader, Ramón Torres, 40, said through a translator during a recent rehearsal. He performs under the name Ariel and has recently been navigating the arena on crutches.

Injury has thrown off the Torres daredevils’ timing. Nevertheless there is new urgency in their quest since another troupe is also threatening to break the record.

While the family Torres, performing as the Rebel Riders, has been presenting seven riders in the globe simultaneously for more than a year, so has another troupe: the Dominguez Extreme Riders. These former Ringling performers star in the touring George Carden Circus International.

“We are hoping to exceed seven in front of an audience soon, during a special performance,” Juan Toscano, 31, a leader of the Dominguez Riders, said by phone from Springfield, Mo., where the group was performing.

There is no official governing body that certifies vroom-vroom achievements in dueling globes of death. But independent experts know of no precedent before an audience in a 16-foot globe.

“Eight would certainly be a record,” said Fred D. Pfening Jr., editor of Bandwagon: The Journal of the Circus Historical Society, in Columbus, Ohio.

Only a few years ago “we used to think that having five riders in the globe was suicidal,” said William B. Hall, a 74-year-old circus consultant and producer in Churchville, Pa., who said he had seen virtually every death-globe act in the United States since the 1950s.

“Eight would be a gutsy and impressive feat in a globe of that size,” said Erwin Urias, 37, a fourth-generation performer who roars these days in the Urias Family Globe of Death at Nascar events and rock concerts. His troupe is not trying to break the record.

Updated with strobe lighting and helmet-cams, the act seems state-of-the-sphere, but it is actually more than a century old. Mr. Urias said his great-grandfather José da Silva Urias began riding in a globe in Brazil in the early 20th century after the act was pioneered in Europe in the late 1890s. His family owns a 16-foot globe from 1906, Mr. Urias said.

In its new show Ringling has nixed the D-word, billing its attraction as the Globe of Steel. In the early years, though, because of primitive motorcycles, “several riders were killed,” Mr. Toscano of the Dominguez Riders said. And according to Ariel of the Torres family, in the 1980s when a globe’s door accidentally opened, an Argentine rider was ejected and decapitated.

In the sphere, drive chains can stick or snap. And overheated tires can explode as the riders circle counterclockwise (all traveling in one direction to avoid head-on collisions, Ariel said). Therefore the Torres riders fanatically maintain their Honda and Suzuki dirt bikes.

For a long time the Torres troupe was relatively unscathed during its nine-minute act, but recent injuries have delayed The Eight. Last fall there was a chain collision of five motorcycles. Ariel’s brother Ricardo, 26, was hit by a handlebar just below his helmet and was in a coma for a week. He is still recovering from a concussion. And six weeks ago in Richmond, Va., as Ariel was looping upside down in the globe, another rider careened into his rear wheel. Ariel lost control and was pinned by his bike, breaking his right foot in two places.

For now family and friends have stepped in for the brothers, but the troupe did achieve The Eight four times in practice at the end of last year in the Ringling winter quarters in Tampa, Fla.

The Dominguez Riders are also presenting seven cyclists. But perhaps since eight would not seem as record worthy in their larger, 17-foot globe, the group is now trying to fill its sphere with nine in front of an audience, something it has often done in practice, Mr. Toscano said.

Meanwhile in New York the Ringling riders are trying for The Eight. Ariel’s 37-year-old brother Francisco explained: “For all of us? It would be like achieving the impossible.”