MAKING A LIVING ON TOP OF THEIR WHEEL OF DEATH

When Marco and Philip Peters call it The Wheel Of Death, they’re not kidding.

The spinning contraption that the Dutch-born Peters brothers use in their Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus act looks like a stomach-churning double Ferris wheel. During the tandem’s opening-night performance Thursday at the Los Angeles Sports Arena (through Sunday), Marco Peters discovered that a case of nausea would have been a far better alternative to the evening’s happenings.

Peters was wearing two blindfolds while walking on the outside of one of the wheels of The Wheel of Death. Meanwhile, Philip Peters was walking inside the opposite wheel, where his weight and motion caused the axle-supported gadget to lift Marco into the air. When Marco was about 60 feet above the concrete floor, he slipped and fell.

“The rigging of the axle was off balance and I just missed a step. I fell off and my elbow hooked onto a cable (about 15 feet from the ground) and I held onto it,” the 24-year-old acrobat said.

“If the cable hadn’t broken my fall, I wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you,” he said.

Bruised but unbroken, Peters and his brother know of the constant risk, but it’s all in a day’s work. The next day they started practicing again for the 1:30 p.m. show.

“We did 4 1/2 hours of practice. You have to go up, straight up after (an accident),” he said.

Except Peters is taking it a step further by ignoring his doctor’s orders to wear an arm sling.

“If my legs fall off and my arms fall off, then I won’t work anymore,” he said.

The danger is nothing new for the Peters brothers; the death of Philip’s trapeze partner played a part in bringing the two together.

“He and I were working together 3 1/2 years ago in Portugal, and he fell and broke his neck,” Philip, 23, recalled. “Then I went with my brother.”

Before Marco had designed The Wheel of Death, he also had his share of hazardous brushes.

“I used to be a lion and tiger trainer, and the animals didn’t get along,” he said. “But during one performance, the animals were in heat, and the lions attacked the tigers, and some of the animals were killed.”

Born in Amsterdam, the brothers separately dived into circus careers when were they were teen-agers. But their first few years in different circuses amounted to little more than being apprentices and stable hands.

“I had to shovel droppings for four years before I performed,” Marco said.

After he had sold his animals and the training equipment about four years ago, Marco went back to the Dutch countryside and began designing, building and practicing on a prototype of The Wheel of Death on a farm.

“People thought it was a windmill or something,” he recalled.

But one of the spectators, a British circus owner, drove up in a black limousine and offered him about $750 a week as a performer in a Hong Kong-based troupe.

“I just signed the contract,” he said. “I got home and took my map out to see where Hong Kong was. I didn’t even know it was an island.”

After Marco’s initial success with The Wheel of Death, he hooked up with his brother in 1983, and six months ago they signed a deal with the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus.

“In America, if you work hard, you can really make it here,” Marco said. “This is actually what I always wanted. But my mother would rather see us do a floor show or a magic act.”