R.I.P Evel Knievel

[shardian]

Evel Knievel dead at 69

[markrvp]

What a shame... he built beautiful arcade cabinets.

[Freeplay]

Hang on...... not our Knievel..... don't panic.....the king of creation is still kicking.....

But Evel is no more.

NEWS FLASH FROM REUTERS

Daredevil Evel Knievel, who dodged death in spectacular motorcycle leaps and crashes in a life full of showmanship, died overnight at age 69.

"I just spoke with him last night. He seemed to be in good spirits," said Knievel's lawyer, Richard Fee, adding he died in the Tampa Bay area of Florida where he recently made his home.

The front page of the tempestuous showman's official Web site — www.evelknievel.com — read simply "Robert Craig 'Evel' Knievel October 17, 1938 - November 30, 2007."

The site quickly became inaccessible as it presumably suffered a deluge of hits.
 
Knievel had been ill for some time, suffering from a lung disease.

He recently gave what he said "may be the last interview I ever do" to the December issue of Maxim magazine and battled rap singer Kanye West for infringing his trademark in the "Touch the Sky" video, in which West appears as "Evel Kanyevel" and wears a white jumpsuit like the one Knievel made famous.

The two reached a settlement on Tuesday.

In his heyday, the king of all daredevils dressed like a superhero in a red, white and blue leather jumpsuit with a cape and cane, his hair sculpted back in a tall pompadour.

Knievel's greatest stunt turned out to be a failure when on Sept. 8, 1974, he tried to ride a rocket-powered motorcycle across the Snake River Canyon in Idaho.

With a nationwide pay-per-view television audience watching, the parachute deployed when his Skycycle X-2 was only about two-thirds across, sending the cycle into the canyon wall.

It landed partly in the river but Knievel walked away with minor injuries.

In a typical stunt, Knievel would race up a ramp and soar over a dozen or more buses or cars parked side by side.

"Anybody can jump a motorcycle," he once told Esquire magazine. "The trouble begins when you try to land it."

Knievel broke more than 40 bones, including his back seven times.

His final years were plagued by pain resulting from his numerous accidents, as well as pulmonary fibrosis, a scarring of the lungs.

"God never made a tougher son of a ---smurf--- than me," Knievel told USA Today in an interview published in January 2007.

The reporter described Knievel, who was 68 at the time, as feeble and reliant on an oxygen tank and an implanted drug pump to relieve his pain.

His famous nickname came courtesy of a jailer who dubbed him "Evil Knievel" after run-ins with the police as a youth.

To avoid being seen as a bad guy, Knievel later changed the spelling to "Evel" as his daredevil career took off.

Death of a daredevil

May he Rest In Peace

[danny_galaga]

What a shame... he built beautiful arcade cabinets.

 

but seriously though, i didnt even realie he was still alive! wasnt his son doing stunts as well?

[Icantlogin]

Sad day.

I can credit him with one broken arm jumping a trash can on my bike, and many scraped knuckles playing with his toy stunt cycle.

[AgentX]

Dammit...

I had three heros growing up in Buffalo NY in th 70's.

OJ Simpson
Evel Knievel
and my Dad

thank god for Dad.

[MikeQ]

Ha! I was growing up in Rochester NY in the 70's.  He was my first hero.  We lived in a development that was new and had a lot of houses being built.  We would go to all the new houses and collect the refrigerator boxes on the curb.  We had a ramp we built on a dead end street that was about 4 feet high.  We would line up the refrigerator boxes like buses and jump them with our bikes.  If you didn't make it, you would just flip end over end on the boxes without any real injury.

Those were the days.

[billf]

Sad day.

I can credit him with one broken arm jumping a trash can on my bike, and many scraped knuckles playing with his toy stunt cycle.

Have to concur - sad day.  I remember playing with the stunt cycle; it was a great toy.  Couple of links to pages about the stunt cycle:

http://www.plaidstallions.com/evel/index.html

http://weirdscifi.ratiosemper.com/evelknievel/toys.html

[btp2k2]

The stuntcycle was awesome for sure. I remember hitting my father in the head with it as he napped on the floor...

I jumped a ditch by my house as a kid....at age 10 it was a pretty gnarly jump...maybe 4 feet....the kid next door was a bit older and me and my friend would always try to go big to impress him...you know...show the big kids we were cool too...stupid. So the older kid, Charlie, took me up this hill with the ramp below and I was like...I don't know....it's big. And he said "Stop being a wuss...you know Evel Knievel would do it" So I went. And destroyed my scrotum on the neck, chipped a tooth and broke my finger when I stuck my hand out. I looked like mangled ass....but I was cool man. I got to hang out with the older kids after that....thanks Evel!

R.I.P.

[danny_galaga]

And destroyed my scrotum on the neck...

that was fortuitous, would have saved heaps on cranio-facial surgery 

[clanggedin]

When I was 3 or 4 years old I couldn't pronounce his name,so I called him Eeekidy Evel.

He was the man back in 70s.