Axel Gautier's Targa getting off the train.

Axel Gautier, 51, Elephant Trainer With Circus, Dies By GLENN COLLINS Published: May 7, 1993 Axel Gautier, a leading trainer of elephants who had been a performer with the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus for 35 years, died on Wednesday in Shands Hospital at the University of Florida in Gainesville. He was 51. One of the elephants he was working with at the Ringling Elephant Farm in Wiliston, Fla., knocked him down and stepped on him, said Rodney Huey, a Ringling spokesman. Mr. Gautier was taken by helicopter to the hospital. Long a featured performer and senior elephant trainer with the Ringling Show, Mr. Gautier had been appearing with the Blue Unit, one of the show's two traveling circuses, in Asheville N.C. He was making a brief visit to the Elephant Farm, where Ringling operates its elephant conservation and breeding program with a herd of 20 elephants. Mr. Gautier's sons, Michael, 28, and Kevin, 23, had both been appearing in the show with their father and 18 elephants, and they performed after the accident on Wednesday night. Born in 1942 in Breslau, Germany, which is now a part of Poland, Mr. Gautier was descended from six generations of circus performers. His ancestors founded the Didier Gautier circus in France. He joined the Greatest Show on Earth at the age of 15, worked as an apprentice with the elephant trainer Hugo Schmitt, and inherited the act when Mr. Schmitt retired in 1970. Mr. Gautier, largely by voice command, trained elephants to stand on their heads, walk sidewards and lift circus performers with their trunks and their mouths. Besides his sons, he is survived by his wife, Donna, three sisters and a grandson. Photo: Axel Gautier (Jack Mitchell, 1982)