The legend Evel Knievel, famous for his red-white-and-blue-spangles on a motorcycle, the same man who was immortalized in the Smithsonian Institution as “America’s Legendary Daredevil,” and was best known for a failed 1974 attempt to jump Snake River Canyon on a rocket-powered cycle and a spectacular crash at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. He also would jump over crazy obstacles like live sharks, fire, and Greyhound buses. Unfortunately for his family and the World, he died this past Friday at the age of 69, Knievel had 10 grandchildren and a great-grandchild.
Krysten Knievel, Evel’s granddaughter, confirmed his death. He had been in failing health for years, suffering from diabetes and pulmonary fibrosis, he had undergone a liver transplant in 1999 after nearly dying of hepatitis C, thought to be contracted through a blood transfusion after one of his bad spills. Evel had trouble breathing Friday at his Clearwater condo and died before an ambulance could get him to a hospital. Longtime friend and promoter Billy Rundel said,”It’s been coming for years, but you just don’t expect it. Superman just doesn’t die, right?”
“I think he lived 20 years longer than most people would have” said his son Kelly Knievel, 47. “I think he willed himself into an extra five or six years.”
His death came just two days after it was announced that he and rapper Kanye West had settled a federal lawsuit over the use of his trademarked image in a popular Kanye West music video. Evel Knievel made a good living selling his autographs and endorsing products. Thousands came to Butte, Mont., every year during the “Evel Knievel Days”. “They started out watching me bust my ass, and I became part of their lives,” Knievel said. “People wanted to associate with a winner, not a loser. They wanted to associate with someone who kept trying to be a winner.” To Knievel, there always were mountains to climb, feats to conquer.
“No king or prince has lived a better life,” he said in May 2006, “You’re looking at a guy who’s really done it all. And there are things I wish I had done better, not only for me but for the ones I loved.”
He began his daredevil career in 1965, Evel Knievel’s Motorcycle Daredevils, a touring show in which he performed stunts such as riding through fire walls, jumping over live rattlesnakes and mountain lions and being towed at 200 mph behind dragsters. In 1966 he began touring alone, touring the West and doing everything from driving the trucks, erecting the ramps and promoting the shows. In the early years he charged $500 for a jump over two cars parked between ramps. He steadily increased the length of the jumps until, on New Years 1968, he was nearly killed in Las Vegas when he jumped 151 feet across the fountains in front of Caesar’s Palace. He cleared the fountains but the crash landing put him in a coma and in the hospital for a month. His son, Robbie, successfully completed the same jump in April 1989.
In the years after the Caesar’s crash, the fee for Evel’s performances increased to $1 million for his jump over 13 buses at Wembley Stadium in London where the landing broke his pelvis. $6 million for the 1974 attempt to clear the Snake River Canyon in Idaho on a rocket-powered motorcycle. The parachute malfunctioned and deployed after takeoff. Strong winds blew him and the “Sky-cycle” into the canyon, landing him next to the swirling river below.
Never to act a quitter, in Oct. of 1975 he jumped 14 Greyhound buses at King Island in Ohio. Knievel decided to retire after a jump in the winter of 1976 where he was again injured. He suffered a concussion and broke both arms in an attempt to jump a tank full of live sharks in the Chicago Amphitheater. He continued to do smaller exhibitions around the country with his son, Robbie. Knievel also dabbled in movies and TV, starring as himself in “Viva Knievel” and in an episode of the 1980s TV show “Bionic Woman.” Evel Knievel toys accounted for more than $300 million in sales for Ideal and other companies in the 1970s and ’80s. Born Robert Craig Knievel in the copper mining town of Butte on Oct. 17, 1938, Knievel was raised by his grandparents. He traced his career choice back to the time he saw Joey Chitwood’s Auto Daredevil Show at age 8.
Outstanding in track and field, ski jumping and ice hockey at Butte High School, Knievel went on to win the Northern Rocky Mountain Ski Association Class A Men’s ski jumping championship in 1957 and played with the Charlotte Clippers of the Eastern Hockey League in 1959. He also formed the Butte Bombers semiprofessional hockey team, acting as owner, manager, coach and player. Knievel also worked in the copper mines, served in the Army, ran his own hunting guide service, sold insurance and ran Honda motorcycle dealerships. As a motorcycle dealer, he drummed up business by offering $100 off the price of a motorcycle to customers who could beat him at arm wrestling. At various interviews, Knievel claimed to have been a swindler, a card thief, a safe cracker, a holdup man.
Robbie Knievel followed in his father’s footsteps as a daredevil, jumping a moving locomotive in a 200-foot, ramp-to-ramp motorcycle stunt on live television in 2000. He also jumped a 200-foot-wide chasm of the Grand Canyon.
