Albert Lucas

Albert Lucas
Website	www.isjf.org
Highest numbers juggled	10 balls flashed 10 rings qualified (in competition) 13 rings flashed (on video) 14 rings flashed? (claim) 7 clubs qualified

 Albert Lucas (born in 1960) is an American juggler known for flashing high numbers of rings, juggling while ice skating, and promoting joggling as a sport. He is the only person to have flashed 13 rings, and the only person to have qualified 10 objects in competition, juggling 10 rings for 20 catches in the numbers competitions at the IJA Summer Festivals in 1996 and 2002. Since 1988 the IJA has awarded the Lucas Cup, a trophy named after and designed by Albert Lucas, to the Individuals Stage champion each year.

Albert learned to juggle when he was three and started performing at age four in comedy clubs, small circuses and night clubs. From age 8 to 11 he toured with Liberace and then performed in Las Vegas. From age 12 to 22, he traveled the world performing his juggling act on ice with the Ice Capades. Albert spent several years performing in the Around the World on Ice show at Busch Gardens Theme Park. Albert has performed at both the NBA Finals and the NHL Stanley Cup Finals.

In Kit Summers' 1987 book, Juggling with Finesse, Kit named a club juggling trick previously known as "butterflies", where the clubs go between the legs from front to back with both feet on the floor, after Albert Lucas. He called it "Alberts", because Albert was the first person he had seen doing that trick, although as Kit and Albert both acknowledged later, Albert was not the inventor of the trick (according to a Juggler's Bulletin article it was invented by Morris Cronin). Kit called a variation of this trick where the clubs go between the legs from back to front "Treblas" ("Albert" spelled backwards). In 2000 Jason Garfield, who disapproved of people giving Albert credit for a trick he didn't invent, introduced a new name for the trick, "crotch throws", and later the euphemism "body throws".

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World records

Records verified by JISCON:

• 12 rings: 12 catches in 1996, tied with Anthony Gatto (in 1993), Sam Hartford (record submitted to JISCON in 2010), and Lajos Nereus (in 2010)
• 13 rings: 13 catches in 2002 (in a sync 14 ring pattern: (e,e)(e,e)(e,e)(e,e)(e,e)(e,e)(e,0), starting with 8 rings in his hands and 5 in holsters. The video was shown to JISCON and to jugglers at the 2002 IJA festival, but has never been made available to the public.)

Unofficial records with no available video evidence:

• 14 rings: 14 catches (Albert claims to have a video of a 14 ring flash, but he doesn't want to share the video because it doesn't show the whole pattern. In 2001, he tried to set the record publicly on the BBC show "Record Breakers", but gave up exhausted after trying 14 rings over 60 times.

Competitions

Albert won the following IJA competitions:

1970:

• Numbers competition (7 rings for 61 seconds, at age 10)

1984:

• Individuals Stage Competition

• Numbers: 7 objects
• Numbers: 5 clubs
• Numbers Challenge: Rings

• Joggling: 100 meters

1988:

• Joggling: Men's 1 mile

1994:

• Joggling: Men's 100 meters
• Joggling: Men's 1 mile

1996:

• Numbers: Solo Rings

• Joggling: Men's 100 meters
• Joggling: Men's 1 mile

2000:

• Joggling: 100 meters
• Joggling: 400 meters

2002:

• Numbers: Solo Rings

• Joggling: 100 meters - 5 balls