Eustace looks for hat-trick

Defending King of Carnival Curtis Eustace is confident he will pull off  a hat-trick win at tonight’s Dimanche Gras competition and added that his rival’s win in both prelims and semi-finals is no intimidation. “That has happened before, it’s not impossible that someone else comes out on top. It is a different panel of judges and a different show,” Eustace told Sunday Newsday. Should he win the title, it will be dedicated to his uncle, Gordon Eustace, who passed away last year. “I’m in a very controlled frame of mind. I have utmost confidence in myself and my crew that we could pull it off,” he said. His 2004 portrayal is “Drums of Freedom” from the band Legends.

However, Geraldo Vieira, Jr, winner of the first and second leg of the competition, is set to capture the title with his “sound design”. Vieira, who won the title in 2001, said he is comfortable with the construction and design of Alladin’s Last Ride from the Trini Revellers section ‘Arabian Nights’ and is anticipating a good show tonight. “This year we took time to design the king. We went about every little corner, checking it out, making sure that everything was perfect from the get go,” Vieira told Sunday Newsday. Alladin’s Last Ride which figures an unusual bird with elongated neck is synonymous with fictitious birds in fables of old. In this picture, Vieira informed, “Alladin rides into battle. He rides to his death but the birds come back alive with the music.”

As a model, Vieira and his team used an actual skeleton of a dead bird’s neck. “We had the bird bones, literature on bird bones and scaled it. We took measurements and blew it up. Everything was done perfect. We improvised on the tail, armour and colour,” Vieira added. He was at the time working on costuming for other Carnival bands and stage props for the opening of Dimanche Gras at their mas camp in Barataria. Legends Queen Alana Ward, who pulled off a hat-trick in the Queen of Carnival competition last year said she is leaving everything up to the Lord. Ward, whose portrayal — “If You Love Something, Set it Free” from the section “Freedom” represents “free as a bird, two birds in full flight.” “Ah love it, ah love it. Ah love everything about the costume,” she said. She is in the winning frame of mind; this year being different to previous years since “I’m just calm,” she said. “I don’t know if it’s years of knowledge. I mean, yuh still have doubts but ah not swell-headed, not nervous.”