A Man Called "Evel"

You really did have to be there

Evel Knievel jumps on the streets of San Francisco, 1967


Note: There was a link to this old chestnut in last week’s post, but the SS data feed tells me that exactly zero readers went through that door. Hey, I get it — it’s fun to skip down the digital aisles of Substack reading a post and a post there, then move on, and it’s not often that I feel like making hypertext leaps down a rabbit hole to God knows where. Still, I think this one’s worth dragging back into the spotlight, and maybe you’ll agree ... but if not, no worries. There’s always next week.

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While crawling home from work in the rain-snarled traffic over Laurel Canyon, a voice on the radio — in the calm, measured tones of NPR — announced the death of Evel Knievel, a name I hadn’t heard for a long time … a name that carried me way back. It took a moment to absorb the news. It didn’t seem possible that anyone who charged through life as hard and fast as Evel Knievel could live long enough to die from the creeping ravages of old age rather than in another horrific motorcycle crash, “rag-dolled” by the merciless fury of Newtonian Physics. Almost as hard to believe is that a man who’d endured such horrendous mayhem in his personal and professional life would turn out to be mortal after all.

Given the physical limits no human can transcend — not even a larger-than-life figure like Evel Knievel — it had been thirty years since he last jumped a motorcycle, after which a series of health problems, nagging injuries, lawsuits, and financial difficulties dragged him far from the glory days of the late 60’s and 70’s. As his star faded, the name “Evel Knievel” only made the news when he took a new wife, went to jail, was hit with another lawsuit, or when his son Robbie picked up the torch to launch his own motorcycle-jumping career. The kid was good, too — maybe a better pure jumper than his dad — but in the end, there was only one Evel Knievel. That kind of lightning only strikes once.

He had his share of human faults and failings, but unlike many people in the public eye, Evel Knievel was not a bullshit artist. He’d publicly announce what he planned to do, then do it — or try his damnedest — whether that meant jumping a motorcycle over 50 cars in the LA Coliseum (successfully), or strapping himself into the rocket-powered “Sky Cycle” to shoot across the Snake River Canyon, a stunt that had all the appearances of a very public suicide. He suffered setbacks and failures, but never for lack of trying. One account of his career stated that of Evel’s three hundred attempted jumps, two hundred and seventy-six were successful. A ninety percent success rate would be other-worldly in most athletic endeavors — imagine a basketball player sinking nine out of every ten shots over his entire career, or a slugger in baseball retiring with a lifetime .900 average — but in the no-mercy world of motorcycle jumping, the dark side his success rate led to twenty-four high-speed crashes, thirty-plus broken bones, and more than a dozen post-crash surgeries. His most memorable hard landing was the infamous Caesar’s Palace jump on New Year’s Day of 1968, when he lost control on the landing ramp and began a horrifying tumble across a long stretch of Las Vegas asphalt that left him into a coma for a full month. Watching the tapes of that disaster, it’s hard to believe anybody could survive such a crash, let alone come back for more, but Evel went right back to jumping motorcycles once he’d recovered. Call him crazy — I won't argue — but you can't deny that Evel Knievel had more raw courage than most of us can imagine. Many of his jumps were documented on television, but grainy video footage can’t communicate the emotional impact of watching a jump in person. To this day, the two motorcycle jumps I witnessed are among the most jaw-dropping performances I ever saw.

The first was on the streets of San Francisco in the late ‘60s, sponsored by a motorcycle show held at the downtown Civic Center Auditorium. In those days, Honda, Yamaha, and Suzuki were in fierce competition with Triumph, BSA, and Norton to produce faster, more sophisticated models every year, and each factory introduced its new lineup at motorcycle shows around the country. Still a teenager at the time, I’d never heard of Evel Knievel, but being in the early stages of a lifelong addiction to motorcycles, I went to the show with a couple of buddies to drool over all the new bikes on display.

After staring at all those gleaming, unaffordable motorcycles for a while, we wandered outside where two big wooden ramps had been set up on the street, each six or seven feet high. I wasn’t much at estimating distances back then, but they were probably sixty to seventy feet apart — maybe further — with nothing underneath but cold, hard pavement. A very enthusiastic announcer was working the public address microphone hard, intoning the name “Evel Knievel” again and again, talking about his many daring jumps in the past, and promising even more extraordinary jumps in the future, including his intention to jump the Grand Canyon.

Evel Knievel — what kind of name was that? Jump a motorcycle over the Grand Canyon? This was crazy, a joke, something straight out of a comic book.

My questions were answered by the full-throttle roar of a Triumph 650 racing motor blasting through wide-open pipes. Out rode a man in white leathers and a full-face helmet, doing wheelies all the way down the runway alongside both ramps. This was impressive, but not particularly amazing — I’d seen plenty of wheelies before — but when he began doing high-speed wheelies while standing on the seat of that Triumph, I sat up and paid attention.

He stopped the bike, took off his helmet, and made a short speech to the crowd, then put the helmet back on and kicked the engine to life. Starting well back of the ramps, he made a speed run right past them, then came back for another, faster run. The announcer was shouting over the PA speakers now, claiming that Evel had to reach 90 miles per hour to make the jump. He made another run, then another, this last one clearly fast enough to get the job done … and only then did it sink into my thick teenage skull that this guy with the crazy name was actually going to hit that takeoff ramp at high speed on a motorcycle weighing more than 300 pounds, then fly through thin air towards the other ramp.

The odds of this ending in disaster seemed high. Coming in without enough speed would mean smashing head-on into the landing ramp and suffering horrendous — possibly fatal — injuries, but too much speed would carry the bike past the sweet spot of the landing ramp, causing a hard landing and a crash.¹ If he didn’t feather the throttle at the exact right moment of takeoff, the motorcycle would spin backward and send them both tumbling to the pavement. A helmet and leathers would offer precious little protection from a crash like that. For him to land safely, everything would have to go right.

This all sounds simple enough now, sitting in front of a warm fire on a cold rainy night, but it didn’t seem simple at the time, and for good reason: there was nothing simple about it. I’d never even heard of anybody attempting a jump like this back then, much less witnessed it.

With the speed dialed in, he made one last test run, this time riding up the take-off ramp, where he slammed on the brakes and slid to a stop at the lip of the abyss. There he sat, staring for a long time at the suddenly distant landing ramp, before finally turning the bike around and riding back to the starting area. This was it. He revved the motor again and again, the tension mounting. It was only then that it hit me just how scared I was — how scared we all were — scared he wouldn’t make it, and how awful the consequences would be. It just didn’t seem possible.

He dropped the clutch and roared toward the ramp, nailed it dead center, and an instant later was sailing through the air a good 15 feet above the pavement. At the very peak of his trajectory — a moment of maximum vulnerability — the bike shuddered with an alarming wobble, but he fought it and hit the landing ramp hard, tires skidding down the wood to asphalt, barely in control. A very hairy jump had nearly gone wrong right before my wide-open eyes, but he did it: Evel Knievel pulled it off.

(Note: the clip at that link shows one of three jumps he made that weekend — unlike the one I saw, it was a perfectly smooth jump)

I was stunned, astonished, and elated all at once — I’d seen plenty of motorcycle races, but never anything like this. Later, a photo appeared in a motorcycle magazine that showed his bike’s right foot peg rubber slipping off in mid-flight of that jump … and with it, Evel’s foot. This is what caused the bobble and subsequent rough landing that broke the Triumph’s rear suspension. That he managed to regain control of the bike in flight, somehow avoiding what should have been a bone-crushing disaster, was a minor miracle.

I saw him jump again a few years later on a cold, wet, blustery night at the Cow Palace south of San Francisco, where I’d gone to see a slate of indoor motorcycle races highlighted by Evel’s jump. The Cow Palace was designed to host livestock exhibitions, not motorcycle jumps, and since there wasn’t enough room in the arena to get up sufficient speed, Evel had to start his run outside in the dark, rainy parking lot. Further complicating things, there wasn’t much room beyond the landing ramp to stop the bike after he hit the landing ramp.

Imagine sitting astride a high-powered motorcycle at night in a cold rain while preparing to race full-throttle through the narrow doors of the building's entrance down into the arena, then hitting the take-off ramp just right and flying a hundred feet through the air to make a safe landing on the opposite ramp. Rain and motorcycles are a dangerous mix in the best of times — trying to make this jump starting in the rain seemed beyond foolhardy. It was insanity.

Ever the showman, Evel did his usual crowd-pleasing wheelies and speed runs, the last of which ended in a crash when he ran out of room past the landing ramp. While mechanics worked to fix the bike, he addressed the crowd with his usual “America's the greatest country on earth" speech — but this time added a few negative comments about the “bad element” in the motorcycle world, referring to “outlaw” bikers. As it happened, there were half a dozen Hells Angels in the audience who were not at all amused.

Evel ended his speech by giving away a mini-bike to a very happy little boy, at which point thunderous applause rose from the crowd. He had that audience in the palm of his hand — everybody but those Hells Angels. With the bike fixed and ready to go, it was showtime.

I left the grandstands to watch from the arena floor with a few hundred other fans as Evel made one last speed run, then headed outside into the rainy night. A minute later he came roaring back in, nailed the ramp with perfect form, then flew through the air to a rough but safe landing. It was a spectacular jump.

I didn’t see a Hell’s Angel throw something at Evel — a beer bottle or tire iron— as he thundered in from the rain approaching the takeoff ramp: all I saw was the jump, then a triumphant Evel circle back into the arena floor waving to the cheering crowd. Still rolling, he stepped off the bike in one continuous motion to land a haymaker on the jaw of the nearest Hell’s Angel. When several more Angels jumped on Evel, the crowd let out a howl of primal rage and turned their adrenaline-laced fury on every outlaw biker in sight. I saw an Angel throwing punches in the lower grandstand seats, while another held the crowd at bay on the arena floor by swinging a big board around his head. The crowd surged in, then away as that big chunk of wood came whistling around, but it was one against a hundred, and not even a Hell’s Angel can beat those odds. Eventually the angry crowd closed in and beat him senseless. By then, the Angel in the grandstands had been overwhelmed and lay unconscious, half his body hanging over the lower edge of the arena while the crowd kept beating him with a board. There were other battles raging that I couldn't see, but every Hell’s Angel who stood his ground that night ended up a bloody mess.

As suddenly as it started, the fracas was over. With the Angels beaten into submission, the Cow Palace security guards ushered us away from the arena floor and out of the building, where I saw one of those bloodied and bruised Hell’s Angels being carried towards an ambulance on a stretcher.

A few years later Evel made his famous Snake River Canyon jump in the Sky Cycle — which was more of a steam-powered rocket than a motorcycle — after the US Park Service refused to let him try to jump the Grand Canyon. The rocket’s parachute deployed as the Sky Cycle shot up the launch ramp, which left him trapped inside the missile as it drifted down into the canyon towards the river, beyond human control. Although he didn’t come close to reaching the opposite rim, he was true to his word in attempting the stunt, and survived another rough landing that could easily have ended in tragedy.

Things went downhill after the Snake River attempt. There were more jumps, more crashes, more broken bones. After being involved with two movies and a book celebrating his exploits, Evel Knievel limped out of a hospital for the last time, hung up his leathers and helmet, and disappeared from the spotlight.

I met him once in the mid-90s when we filmed him for a TV commercial, but gone was the brash, confident young daredevil I’d seen so many years before. He walked slowly now, with a cane, hobbled by age and the lingering pain of all those crashes and broken bones. Wardrobe helped him dress in those famous white leathers, then he threw a leg over the motorcycle one last time for the cameras … and even then, decades past his prime, a big crowd of excited kids gathered around to watch.

While taking a light reading before we did the shot, I mentioned I’d seen him make those two jumps in San Francisco. “We had one hell of a fight up there in the Cow Palace,” he nodded, with a weary grin.

The camera rolled and we got the shot, then Evel limped away. The next time I saw him was his photo in the obituaries.

Evel Knievel was a throwback of sorts, hearkening back to the barnstorming days when ex-Lafayette Escadrille pilots roamed the countryside after World War One to dazzle the locals with feats of aerial daring. The modern X-Games showcase of “extreme sports” comes close to reflecting the rebellious, entrepreneurial spirit exemplified by Evel Knievel — a young daredevil who became a legend by reacting against the bland homogenization of our pre-fabricated, over-litigated, safety-obsessed, life-in-the-bubble culture: a man who put his life on the line every time he went to work.

Many followed his footsteps in making that flying leap of faith over the past thirty years, with his son Robbie Knievel and "Super Joe" Einhorn probably the best known.² Some jumped further and landed harder, but there was only one Evel Knievel, a man who captured the country’s imagination as no other daredevil in modern times. We view the world through the lens of television or the internet nowadays — and the more outlandish and outrageous, the better — but watching on a screen isn’t the same as seeing something up close, in person. The difference is huge.

I wouldn’t go to watch anybody jump a motorcycle these days. Having seen what can happen when a dangerous stunt goes wrong, I've had enough of that sort of thing, but I’m glad I saw Evel Knievel back in the day. Watching him jump thoroughly blew my mind in a way nothing else had at the time, which is a useful thing to happen to a young man. If nothing else, Evel Knievel expanded my concept of what’s possible in life, demonstrating what skill, determination, and brass-balls courage can accomplish … and he showed us all what happens when things go wrong.

So rest easy, Evel, and thanks.

Note: if you're interested in what the IMDB calls "the definitive documentary on Evel Knievel," check out Absolute Evel: The Evel Knievel Story, produced for The History Channel.

1. This is what happened in the Caesar's Palace jump: Evel landed too far down the landing ramp, where the shock of that rough landing ripped the handlebars from his hands, sending him hurtling across the pavement.

2. “Super Joe” Einhorn was a terrific jumper who planned to jump Niagara Falls until he suffered brain damage when a less ambitious jump went wrong.