"They Caught the Quad!"

By Gerald Clarke

The Flying Vazquezes achieve an astounding four flip-flops

Even when their outstretched hands connected, Miguel and Juan Vazquez were not quite sure they had done it. "I didn't believe it," says Juan. "And I asked myself, 'Did I catch him?' " Miguel, his younger brother, was also uncertain. Says he: "It all happened so fast that only when I looked down and saw the floor did I know that we had done the trick." Actually, what the Flying Vazquezes accomplished together on July 10 in Tucson was much more than a trick. It was an athletic feat equivalent to the breaking of the 4-min. mile: the first quadruple somersault performed before a regular circus audience.

The brothers had managed the nearly impossible stunt ten times in practice sessions over the past year, and they had tried doing it at every performance since Dec. 29, when the Ringling Bros, and Barnum & Bailey Circus opened its 112th season. Charley Baumann, the circus' performance director, had seen them fail so many times that he too was stunned when they finally succeeded. He ran to the phone and called the show's producers, Irvin and Kenneth Feld, in Washington. "They asked me why the hell I was calling after midnight," he told TIME's Paul Krueger. "And all I could say was, 'They caught the quad! They caught the quad!' "

Acrobats have been trying to catch the quad since 1897, when, according to many accounts, European Aerialist Lena Jordan first did the triple somersault. The triple is now performed regularly, but it is still an accomplishment reserved for the very best aerialists. Yet Miguel, 17, who represents the fifth generation of a family of Mexican circus performers, was able to do the triple when he was 13. He spun so fast and flew so high that he was urged to go for four.

But there is more to a quad than another flipflop. When a flyer is traveling through the air at 80 m.p.h., reaction time is measured in milli seconds. "If it's a triple somersault, Mi guel can feel if he's going too fast," explains Juan, 32. "He can relax and slow down. If he's going too slowly, he can tuck up tighter and complete the third somer sault faster." The quadruple, by contrast, allows no such mid-course adjustment; once the flyer has released the bar and tucked himself up for the first of four turns, he is spinning too fast to correct himself. The burden of timing rests with the catcher. If any changes are to be made, he must make them, matching his swing to the human projectile hurtling toward him.

Although a nylon net pre vents a fall to the ground, the dangers are considerable if something goes wrong. Both brothers could land on their necks or heads, causing injury, or possibly even death. As the catcher, Juan also runs the risk of a shoulder dislocation. To pre vent such accidents, the brothers have made their bodies into pieces of interlocking machinery: they play soccer together for agility, lift weights for strength and box together to heighten their sensitivity to each other's movements. Miguel is small, 5 ft. 7 in., and slim, as fliers tend to be. He weighs only 132 Ibs. and has an almost invisible 26-in. waist. "I think he was born to fly," says Juan. "He is very thin, and yet very, very powerful." Juan, also 5 ft. 7 in., is 33 lbs. heavier, but he is not exactly a candidate for Weight Watchers either. His waist measurement is 28 inches.

In addition to all the exercise, the brothers practice their act three times a week, trying to do the quad ten or 15 times each session. Most of the attempts are recorded on video tape, and when the acrobats are through, they watch what they have just done. Like football players after the game, they study their movements so that they can detect split-second errors in timing. They actually have six practice quads on tape, but the only stunts that are officially counted are those before a paying audience.

The Vazquezes plan to continue to do the quad, but Juan acknowledges that they may be able to do it only 40% of the time; success depends on an almost mystical factor that they refer to as "the feel of the rigging." The rigging is the 33-ft.-tall metal frame from which they work; sometimes it feels solid and sometimes it does not. Cold weather can ruin a performance. Says Juan: "Your body just doesn't want to move the way you want it to" Even the color of the ceiling can affect results. A black ceiling can cause dizziness whereas a white offers a good sense of perspective.

What comes next? Probably the quad and a half. The quintuple somersault, Juan believes, is at least 15 years away. Since a flyer does not usually retire until he is 40, Miguel might be the man to do it. But before that happens, he may leave the field, and the air, to other daring young men on flying trapezes. He says he has another ambition: to come down to earth and play drums and guitar in a rock band.

--By Gerald Clarke

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