robbie knievel

The stuntman who defied death on numerous occasions will finally be laid to rest in nine days' time in Butte, the Montana town where he lived most of his life.


Evel Knievel: the 'grandfather of extreme sports'


Officials in Butte have revealed that they have hired the Butte Civic Centre for the funeral � a basketball and concert arena that seats more than 17,000 people, with spillover rooms for even more mourners.

The arena, which is nearly twice the size of Wembley Arena, is home to the Butte Daredevils, a basketball team named in Knieval's honour. It can seat half the residents of the copper mining town.

Knieval, 69, who succumbed to incurable lung disease pulmonary fibrosis, will be buried beneath a gravestone that was first created in 1974, when he attempted to leap across the 1,700 foot wide Snake River Canyon in Idaho on a rocket powered motorbike.

The attempt failed and he plunged into the canyon � the first of three big accidents that left him with 40 broken bones and meant he spent three of his 69 years in hospital.

advertisementIn 1999, Knievel had undergone a liver transplant after nearly dying of hepatitis C, probably contracted through a blood transfusion after one of his crash injuries.

He also spent his last years connected 24 hours a day to a drip pumping powerful painkillers into a spine that had been fused by hundreds of jarring motorcycle jumps.

His death was confirmed by his granddaughter, Krysten, and announced on his internet website.

Born Robert Craig Knievel in Butte Montana, he was a champion skier and a lifelong golfer. Less positively, he was also a bank robber and, at one time, an alcoholic.

His supremely colourful CV also included jobs as a diamond drill operator, hunting guide, insurance salesman and motorcycle dealer.

However, it was as a stuntman - aptly once described as the "grandfather of extreme sports" - that Knievel made his unspellable name.

He was raised by his grandparents, and earlier this year admitted that his chief regret in his life was that he didn't spend more time with his grandmother.

He began his daredevil career in 1965, when he formed a troupe called 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.

A year later, he branched off on his own, steadily the length of his motorcycle jumps until, on New Year's Day 1968, he was nearly killed when he jumped 151 feet across the fountains in front of Caesar's Palace, Las Vegas.

He cleared the fountains, but the crash landing put him in the hospital in a coma for a month.

Soon, his trademark look - white leather jumpsuit festooned with stars and stripes and inspired by Liberace, flying cape and walking stick - was recognised all over the world.

In the early 1970s, his fame soared to the stage that he could charge $1 million for his jump over 13 buses at Wembley Stadium in London and $6 million for his failed 1974 attempt to cross Snake River Canyon on a rocket-powered cycle.

Knievel decided to retire after a jump in the winter of 1976 in which he was again seriously injured. He suffered a concussion and broke both arms in an attempt to jump a tank full of live sharks in the Chicago Amphitheatre.

Immortalised in the Smithsonian Institution as "America's Legendary Daredevil," he suffered nearly 40 broken bones before he retired in 1980.

He continued to do smaller exhibitions around the country with his son, Robbie.

Knievel also dabbled in movies and television, starring as himself in "Viva Knievel" and with Lindsay Wagner in an episode of the 1980s TV series "Bionic Woman." George Hamilton and Sam Elliott each played Knievel in movies about his life.

Although his fame diminished in the 1980s, Knievel enjoyed a resurgence in popularity in recent years.

In later life, he still made a good living selling his autographs and endorsing products. His riskiest ventures were instead performed on the golf course where he would bet as much as ￡50,000 on a game.

A hardened gambler who never backed down from a bet, he once pulled a gun on a singer who surreptitiously tried to kick his ball from the rough and on to the fairway.

He was also famously generous, thinking of nothing of walking into a restaurant and picking up everyone's bill.

"Most celebrities have deep pockets and short arms. Evel was the reverse," said George Blanda, a friend.

"He was just a common guy who came up the hard way." Thousands of fans came to Butte every year to celebrates the "Evel Knievel Days" festival.

"They started out watching me bust my ass, and I became part of their lives," Knievel once said. "People wanted to associate with a winner, not a loser. They wanted to associate with someone who kept trying to be a winner."

His death came just two days after it was announced that he and the rapper Kanye West had settled a federal lawsuit over the use of Knievel's trademarked image in a popular West music video.

Late last year Knievel sued West over a rap video, "Touch the Sky", in which the rapper tried to jump a rocket-powered motorcycle over a canyon.

Knievel claimed West's stunt hurt his trademarked image and also objected of being used to promote rap and specifically West's "filth to the world." Meeting West changed his mind, said Knievel. "I thought he was a wonderful guy and quite a gentleman," he said.




Robbie Knievel
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Robert Edward "Kaptain" Knievel (born May 7, 1962 in Butte, Montana) is the third of four children of famous stuntman Evel Knievel and his first wife Linda.

Contents
1 Early life
2 Career
2.1 Bikes
2.2 Records and jumps
3 External links



[edit] Early life
He began jumping his bicycle at age 4 and rode motorcycles at age 7. At age 8 he performed his first show with his father at Madison Square Garden. At age 12 he was on tour with his father where he would perform in the pre-jump shows. He wanted to lengthen his jumps, but his father disapproved. Robbie then went solo after his dad's disapproval.


[edit] Career

[edit] Bikes
Robbie Knievel's jumping career is markedly different from his father's, in that he uses high-performance Honda CR-500 motocross bikes that have been designed for jumping. Evel Knievel used Harley-Davidson motorcycles which were significantly heavier and less agile, and which were really intended for track racing. Also, great care goes into the planning and execution of each of Robbie's jumps, and it is quite evident that he and his team do not "wing it" as was sometimes evident in Evel's jumps.


[edit] Records and jumps
He has completed over 250 jumps, setting 20 world records. These include the Caesars Palace Fountain jump, the building to building jump and Grand Canyon jump. The Grand Canyon jump was partially based on his father's radical and ill-fated attempt at jumping the Snake River Canyon in 1974 on a rocket "motorcycle" which was really much more rocket than motorcycle. In Robbie's jump he actually used a motorcycle and he actually jumped the Grand Canyon. However, while coming off the landing ramp at the high speed he was going the bike became uncontrollable and broke his leg in the resulting crash. While Robbie's jump was harrowing at a distance of 228 feet and a canyon depth of 2500 feet, it was quite a bit less haphazard and ambitious than his father's attempt in 1974 of jumping almost a mile over a canyon in a makeshift rocket.

He is considering a future attempt at jumping the Snake River Canyon on the Snake River near Twin Falls, Idaho, a feat his father had failed at in 1974.

During the summer of 2005, he had his own TV show on A&E called Knievel's Wild Ride. In 2006, he opened a new business called Knievel's Custom Cycles, based in Lake Hopatcong, New Jersey. In late March 2006, Robbie Knievel jumped from one barge to another in Jacksonville, FL and in late July 2006, he made a tribute jump to his father Evel Knievel at Evel Knievel Days in Butte, Montana by jumping the Batmobile and four huge flame throwers.

On March 18, 2007, Robbie jumped an assortment of military vehicles at the North Carolina Auto Expo in Raleigh, North Carolina. Soon afterwards, he appeared in a nationally broadcast commercial for Holiday Inn Express. On June 9, 2007, he appeared in Wilmington, Delaware and successfully jumped $4.8 billion in fake money representing the amount of interest paid to the customers of Ing Direct. In August 2007, he was inducted into the Motorcycle Hall of Fame in Sturgis SD. and made a jump at the Buffalo Chip campground. He is currently planning his 2008 season.