Lucas credits his accomplishments on ice to three factors - an early start, good coaching from Albert Moreira, his father, and interminable practice.

 

There was never much question that he would be a performer. He was born to Albert and Yvonne Moreira in 1960 while the former parent performed acrobatics with the Los Gattos Trio at the London Palladium.

 

For four years the family traveled all over the world, with father introducing son to show business. At age 4, settled into a new home in Los Angeles, Albert was ready to go on stage. His first scheduled appearance at the Hollywood Comedy Club was postponed because he fell asleep waiting for his 9 p.m. curtain call. Two weeks later, however, he went on, standing on a small table, holding a ball in one hand, spinning hoops on an arm and leg, and juggling two rings with another hand. He also did three small clubs.

 

"Everything since then has been an escalation of each trick as my abilities allowed," Lucas said. When he could spin a ball, he stopped holding it and began spinning it. When he could handle three rings instead of two, that was added. Today, the combination has become the "garbage trick" described earlier.

 

As a child he performed occasionally with small circuses and at various nightclubs, dealing with bad lights and tricky winds which would later give him an appreciation for the controlled environment of the stage. His father shielded him from other jugglers with the intent that he should develop his own style, rather than copy someone elses.

 

At age 8, Lucas began a four-year world tour with Liberace which took him from Europe to Australia. With that exposure to large audiences, he began to develop the calm smile and steadiness of nerve that characterize his performances today. He followed that tour with his first Las Vegas engagements, when he became the youngest performer ever at the Tropicana and earned $2,400 a week at the Las Vegas Hilton.

 

He was at the Tropicana when a choreographer for Ice Capades approached him and his father and asked if young Albert could do his act on the ice. "My father, being from the old school in which you didn't turn down jobs, said, 'Certainly,' though I'd never done it before in my life," Albert remembered.

 

"But my father never extended me beyond my ability or led me astray. For the next two months we practiced ice juggling eight hours a day, seven days a week, until the whole stage routine was transferred to the ice."

 

The biggest difficulty in learning to combine the two activities is to compensate for skating speed, acceleration and deceleration. "It was good that I learned the patterns then, because it would be much harder if I had to try today," Lucas commented.

 

The ease of the combination which he achieved in the following decade affects his juggling on land today. As many noticed during his long run with five clubs at the IJA convention, he still wanders forward even when trying to stand still. He believes, though, that skating and juggling helped him win the running and juggling 100-meter dash at the Las Vegas convention.

 

Besides setting new standards on the ice and with numbers, Lucas' has also cracked open a door to the commercialization of juggling through his sponsorship by major manufacturers. He wore Ektalon gloves and bore the mark of FILA sportswear onto the stage for his Guinness records and at the IJA convention. FILA previously sponsored swimmers, race drivers and tennis stars. They are undoubtedly pleased with their first juggling endorsee.

 

"I think I've shown that juggling is a sport, and with sports come endorsements," he said.

 

That includes free props. For his Guinness records, Lucas was supplied 12 rings by Brian Dube and five clubs by Stu Raynolds. Other notable IJA performers

are beginning to reap the same benefits of their ability.

 

Lucas had attended two other IJA conventions, in 1969 and 1970 in Los Angeles. He won two third places the first year, and two second places to accompany a win in the seven rings category the second year. He embraced a formidable task in entering eight competitions at this year's convention, and considered himself lucky to win six.