Cycle News Staff | May 24, 2020
Cycle News Archives
COLUMN
This Cycle News Archives edition is reprinted from February 2004. CN has hundreds of past Archives columns in our files, too many destined to be archives themselves. To prevent that from happening, we will be revisiting past Archives articles while still planning to keep fresh ones coming down the road -Editor.
An Evel Arrival
It was only 15 feet, but it may have been the most significant distance that a young man called Robert Craig Knievel had ever traveled. Over the oasis-like fountains of Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, Nevada, Evel Knievel’s career was launched—with a crash.
The year was 1967, and America was in a cultural quandary. Conflict was everywhere. The hippie movement was gaining ground, as was the deadly momentum of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. A microcosm of the upheaval, motorcycling, too, was trying to find itself, arguably fighting a losing battle in an attempt to gain respectability among the general population. On December 31, Knievel gave it a huge leg up.
“The rest of the motorcycle industry, and I don’t care who you name, was still about rodeo arena-type, dirt-track-performing areas,” Knievel, now 65, says. “The best that they could do was Ascot Park. There was a lot of difference between being a Las Vegas showman and driving a car at Ascot Park.”
Ascot had given Knievel his start in the motorcycle daredevil business, and he had made a decent go of it for the first few years. Yet he knew that to make the great gains that he was seeking in his life, he would have to take greater risks. The fountains at Caesar’s Palace would provide the perfect opportunity.
“I decided that no matter how long that jump was, if I made it, I would go down in history as a real conqueror,” Knievel remembers.
And so the drum-beating began. Evel Knievel was going to jump the fountains. The louder that Evel beat the drum, the more they listened, wondering just what kind of individual was this who would risk death for the enjoyment of others. Some said he was crazy. Knievel’s extravagant flamboyance only fueled the fire further.
“I really tried to come off as a cross between Elvis Presley and Liberace,” Knievel says. “I tried to be as first class at everything as I could. Everybody thought that I was loaded with money, but I didn’t have a dime to my name. I borrowed money from a friend of mine, from Aggie [Ascot promoter J.C. Agajanian] and from my grandmother to go to Las Vegas and stay there for the month that I was there, working on the takeoff and landing area with one other mechanic and carpenter with me—same man. His name was Art Parker.”
On the day of the jump, it all came together. The front of Caesar’s was jammed with people. They lined the streets, and they climbed on top of other casinos’ marquis signs—all to get a glimpse at the emerging hero. Conservative estimates had the crowd at over 15,000. No way, says Knievel.
“It was a lot more than that,” Knievel claims. “The Vegas newspapers were reporting 50,000 to 100,000 people. They just showed up by the thousands to be a part of it.”
And Knievel was not surprised in the least.
“Not really,” he says. “I expected it.”
The short account is that Knievel fired up his Triumph, made a few warm-up runs, and then sailed into history. He cleared the gap, but he lost the handlebars as he careened down the landing ramp. The ensuing crash remains one of the most devastating motorcycle wrecks ever filmed. Much of the throng was horrified, but others got exactly what they came for.
“That really doesn’t bother me,” Knievel says when thinking about those who wanted to see him fail. “Back then, those distances were so far, and nobody had ever done them. Today, there are several of them doing it now. This stunt jumping, with all the tricks that they do on the motorcycles, is just spectacular to watch. The first Harleys I ever jumped had rigid frames and cast-iron heads. I don’t know how I ever jumped them.”
The aftermath: They didn’t think that Knievel was going to live. His pelvis was smashed, his hip broken, and he was unconscious for 29 days. Yet he pulled through, his legend even stronger than his body, cause for speculation that had he not crashed, he might not have been so “lucky.”
“I’ve have always wondered about that,” Knievel says. “You know, I had signed the deal to jump the fountains three times. I was the first performer that ever-represented Caesar’s Palace outdoors. We had hired a great public relations firm [before the jump], and we really thought that they would make something out of it. But I don’t think that the press would have come out of it nearly as much if I hadn’t been hurt so bad. But who’s to say?”
It’s a moot point. After Caesar’s, Knievel went on to become one of the greatest showmen of the 20th century, grossing some $350 million as he checkered success with bone-crunching failure until hanging up his leathers for good in 1976. Today, he says he has no regrets.
“I really made it in life, and in the motorcycle business that I chose, because of my love for motorcycling and being the best in the world at riding the way that I could,” he said. “I know they say that Kenny Roberts was a lot greater rider and that there were other guys that could out- ride Evel Knievel. There were. I was a fan of guys like Gene Romero, Skip Van Leeuwen, Sammy Tanner, Roger Reiman—any one of those guys from that era. We all had a special respect for each other, and we still do to this day. We all kind of lived a certain life together that was special.”
Today, although Knievel no longer does his thing on two wheels, he still gets around.
“I feel good about my life and the way that things are going,” he says. “I go to different motorcycle stores. Some of the stores in the South get together and have an Evel Knievel day. And in Butte, Montana, they have ‘Evel Knievel Days’ in recognition of things I did as a young kid there and later on in life when I tried to help out the town. I just recently worked with Clear Channel, helping them with some promotions that they were doing in the Dallas area. There was never a minute that went by where there weren’t 100 people standing in line, waiting for an autograph. I was so pleased to see that.”
And these days, the only thing that Evel Knievel asks is that he be respected for the respectability that he brought to other motorcyclists.
“I did a lot for motorcyclists all around the world as far getting them respected,” Knievel says. ”And I did it without wearing greasy boots and dirty gloves and a black jacket that stunk like hell. I wore a white jacket, with the red, white and blue on it. And I tried to be number one.”
After December 31, 1967, Evel Knievel was number one. CN