Recently we've been a little surprised to find that some of our younger rider friends are not fully aware of the greatest showman in motorcycling...

Evel Knievel.

So today for our “V-Twins H-D Sunday Series” we’re going to bring you a few snippets from an amazing life, and look briefly at the stunts, the jumps, the crashes, the courtroom convictions, and the sometimes dodgy-doings of Evel Knievel. This post is another long one, even though it only touches small parts of the story, but we find Knievel’s story to be endlessly entertaining, so don’t back out now!

Dive in, and be amazed. What a life!

Very basically, Robert Craig Knievel was born in Montana in 1938, attempted more than 75 ramp-to-ramp motorcycle jumps, was inducted into the Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 1999, and died in 2007.

In today’s world with lightweight, powerful long-suspension bikes carrying extreme and brilliant jump-riders, Knievel's achievements might seem a little pale... but in perspective, oh no. This man blew the world away with his achievements, and he used mostly Harley-Davidson motorcycles and occasionally a Triumph. Heavy bikes, with less power, and unsophisticated suspension.

It seems to us that taken individually, the tales from Knievel’s life can then be added up to an unbroken string of pretty reckless behaviour, based on unquestionable bravery. It’s so appealing – and in many places very amusing – to follow Evel on his journey.

Here’s an example. After leaving high school in what we would call about grade 9, he started work with an underground mining company. Promoted to surface duty driving a large earth mover, Knievel was fired when he made the earth mover do a motorcycle-type wheelstand and drove it into the main power line of Butte, Montana, leaving the city without electricity for several hours.

Later, in 1956, he was spending a night in jail after being arrested for reckless driving (of course!). In the same jail that night was a man named William Knofel, who had the nickname “Awful Knofel”; this led to Knievel adopting “Evel Knievel”.

As some of us do, Knievel was endlessly seeking new thrills and challenges, so in the 1950s he was… a professional rodeo rider… a Class-A men’s ski jumping champion… a soldier… a pole vaulter… and the creator of a semi-pro ice hockey team, the Butte Bombers.

Somehow, he convinced the Czechoslovakian Olympic ice hockey team to play the Butte Bombers in a warm-up game to the 1960 Winter Olympics. Knievel himself was ejected from the game minutes into the third period and left the stadium. Later, when the Czechoslovakian officials went to the box office to collect the money that the team had been promised, workers discovered the game receipts had been stolen. Hmmmm….

In the early 1960s, he joined the motocross circuit and had moderate success, but could not make enough money to support his family. During 1962, Knievel broke his collarbone and shoulder in a motocross accident.

Evel also tried selling insurance, and was successful, until he sold insurance policies to several institutionalized mental patients. Hmmmm. He also wanted the company to make him a Vice President after just a few months on the job, and no surprise, they refused.

After a spell in motorcycle dealerships, he decided that he could do something with a motorcycle stunt show. So with typical energy, self-belief and sweet-talkin’, Knievel promoted the show himself, rented the venue, wrote the press releases, set up the show, sold the tickets and served as his own master of ceremonies.

After a pre-show with a few wheelies, he proceeded to jump a 20-foot-long box of rattlesnakes and two mountain lions. Despite landing short and his back wheel hitting the box containing the rattlesnakes, Knievel managed to land safely.

This is his first recorded jump, and here at V-Twins we have to say that learning about the rattlesnakes and mountain lions had us laughing out loud.

Don’t stop reading now! We know this is long, but the crash-test-dummy part is coming right up!

Evel created “Evel Knievel and his Motorcycle Daredevils” in 1966, and at their second show in Barstow, California, Knievel attempted a new stunt in which he would jump, spread-eagled, over a speeding motorcycle.

Knievel jumped too late and the motorcycle hit him in the groin, tossing him 15 feet into the air. He was hospitalized as a result of his injuries, and the daredevil show broke up after that because injuries prevented him from performing, (no shit Sherlock!).
Later he started jumping the bikes over cars, and adding more and more cars to his jumps. In Montana in July ’66, he attempted to jump 12 cars and a cargo van, but his back wheel hit the top of the van while the front wheel hit the top of the landing ramp. Knievel ended up with a severely broken arm and several broken ribs.

By now, however, Evel was a well-known performer, and the crash and subsequent stay in the hospital were turned into a publicity windfall. (The man’s a genius.)

With each successful jump, the public wanted him to jump one more car. He succeeded over 15 cars, but a couple of months later trying to repeat it he landed on the last vehicle, a panel truck, was thrown from his bike and suffered a serious concussion. After a month, he recovered and returned to the same venue to finish the show, but the result was even worse. Again coming up short, Knievel crashed, breaking his left wrist, right knee and two ribs.

We now get to one of the famous jumps… the fountains at Caesar’s Palace, Las Vegas. Remember we used the word “dodgy” back at the start of this post?

Needing to sell the jump idea to uninterested Caesar’s CEO Jay Sarno, Knievel created a fake corporation called Evel Knievel Enterprises and three fake lawyers to make phone calls to Sarno. Knievel also placed calls to Sarno claiming to be from American Broadcasting Company (ABC) and Sports Illustrated Magazine, enquiring about the jump. Hmmmm… It worked somehow, and the jump was set for New Year’s Eve 1967.

After doing his normal pre-jump show and a few warm-up approaches, Knievel began his real approach. A sudden loss of power on the takeoff caused the bike to come up short, ripping the handlebars out of his hands as he tumbled over them onto the pavement and slid and tumbled into the parking lot of the Dunes Casino next door.

So what broke this time? A crushed pelvis and femur, fractures to his hip, wrist, and both ankles, and a concussion that kept him in the hospital. Rumors circulated that he was in a coma for 29 days in the hospital.

But again, the Caesars Palace crash and recovery was a publicity windfall, and Knievel was more famous than ever! ABC-TV bought the rights to the film of the jump, paying far more than it originally would have cost them had they televised the jump live.

And here he goes again! Just five months after the near-fatal crash in Las Vegas, Knievel performed another jump. In May 1968 Evel crashed while attempting to jump 15 Ford Mustangs. This time he broke his right leg and foot.

And again! Three months later he returned to jumping, while certainly making more money than ever before... approximately $25,000 per performance. Evel was making successful jumps almost weekly until October ’68, where in Nevada trying to stick the landing, he lost control of the bike, crashed again, and broke his hip again.

A few years on, in February 1971, he set a new world record by jumping 19 cars with his Harley-Davidson XR-750. Knievel held that record for 27 years until Bubba Blackwell jumped 20 cars in 1998, again with an XR-750. In 2015, Doug Danger surpassed that number with 22 cars, accomplishing this feat on Evel Knievel's actual vintage 1972 Harley-Davidson XR-750. That's special!

Bad form returned (no surprise, surely) in May 1971 when Knievel crashed while attempting to jump 13 Pepsi delivery trucks. Lack of take-off speed caused the motorcycle to come down front wheel first, and after being thrown off, he skidded for 50 feet (15m). This time, he broke his collarbone, suffered a compound fracture of his right arm, and broke both legs.

I know this is a list of disasters, but how much courage did the man have!!

Here’s another one. In March 1972, after making a successful jump, he tried to come to a quick stop because of a short landing area, but didn’t make it. He reportedly suffered a broken back and concussion after getting thrown off and run over by his XR750. Maybe the bike was saying “enough dude!”

That historic XR-750 is now part of the collection of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.

During his career, Knievel may have suffered more than 433 bone fractures, earning an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records as the survivor of "most bones broken in a lifetime". However, Evel’s son Robbie (another stunt jumper) says this number could be exaggerated.

Then there was the globally-televised Rocket Cycle attempt to jump the Snake River Canyon. The drogue parachute prematurely deployed as the Skycycle left the launching rail and induced significant drag. Even though the craft made it all the way across the canyon to the north rim, the prevailing northwest winds caused it to drift back into the canyon. But no bones were broken! We call that a successful jump!

What next? Back to motorcycle jumping of course! We’re up to May, 1975, in front of 90,000 people at Wembley in London, Knievel crashed while trying to land a jump over 13 London Buses (luckily not double-deckers).

And… he broke his pelvis. But refusing to use a stretcher, Knievel walked off the Wembley field stating, "I came in walking, I went out walking!"

Now… remember we told you at the start that this story is endlessly interesting? Try this next bit.

In 1977 Harley-Davidson withdrew its support for Knievel, because of an assault conviction. Shelly Saltman, a promoter and later a Vice President at 20th Century Fox, had written a powerfully unflattering book about Evel.

Knievel, with both arms still in plaster casts, flew to California to confront Saltman, and attacked him with an aluminum baseball bat. Saltman’s arm and wrist were shattered and he fell unconscious to the ground.

Incredibly, although Knievel claimed to have been insulted by statements in Saltman's book, he and his lawyers had actually been given editorial access to the book prior to its publication, and had approved and signed off on every word! (Wow!)

After six months in county jail (and three years' probation), Knievel lost his marketing endorsements and deals, including Harley-Davidson and Ideal Toys. That was pretty much the end of the great showman’s career.

Even so, in 2003 in Las Vegas at the Harley-Davidson World-Wide Dealer Meeting, dealers and dealer staff stood in line for hours to get a tee-shirt signed by the famous Evel Knievel himself. Priceless!

Thanks for joining us today for our Sunday Series! And to finish, here is a quote from the great Evel Knievel himself:

“You can't ask a guy like me why I performed. I really wanted to fly through the air. I was a daredevil, a performer. I loved the thrill, the money, the whole macho thing. All those things made me Evel Knievel. Sure, I was scared. You gotta be an ass not to be scared. But I beat the hell out of death. [...] You're in the air for four seconds, you're part of the machine, and then if you make a mistake midair, you say to yourself, "Oh, boy. I'm gonna crash," and there's nothing you can do to stop it. Nothing at all.”