| September 15, 2024
Cycle News Archives
COLUMN
50 Years Later
By Kent Taylor
“I said I would jump the canyon when I was damn good and ready! Well, now I’m ready!”
Thus, after years of speculation, exaggeration and plenty of hesitation, Evel Knievel, the king of all daredevils, crawled into a steam-powered rocket and launched himself into history with an attempt to clear a 4/5-mile gap of the Snake River Canyon. Four…three…two…one.
Lift-off…and let down. After years of foreplay, the stunt of the century fizzled as America watched Knievel and his limping Skycycle X-2 parachute down into a humiliating bonk on the rim of the canyon.
It was 50 years ago this week Evel Knievel attempted to “jump” the 4000-foot Snake River chasm in his X-2 Skycycle “motorcycle” that was registered as an airplane.
Much ado about nothing?
That was pretty much what guest editorial writer Ron Schneiders called Knievel’s jump in Cycle News back in September 1974. Schneiders, a respected motorcycle journalist of the time, dismissed Knievel’s effort, blasting it as an event that “certainly wasn’t worth watching from any point of view,” adding that the very best outcome would see Knievel failing to even ignite his rocket ship, resulting in the crowd angrily yanking him from his seat and pitching him, USA jumpsuit and all, into the river.
There was something of a love/hate relationship that the motorcycling media of the 1970s had with one Robert Craig “Evel” Knievel. Motorcyclists were decent human beings who loved to ride, yet they had to fight the stereotypes depicted in the movies that showed riders as either scallawags, thrill-seekers or a little of both. Two-wheeled enthusiasts often struggled to distance themselves from motorcycling ne’er-do-wells like the Hell’s Angels. This was a hard-fought battle for all, and the many (rest in peace) magazines were on a mission to polish motorcycling’s image and showcase the best of the two-wheeled world.
Knievel, however, presented the motorcycling media with a dilemma. On the one hand, he was the most famous rider in the world, inspiring Sting-Ray-mounted kids everywhere to find a board and a cinder block and fly several inches in the air, thus emulating the Good Evel. Many of those kids were itching to ride real motorcycles, tugging on their parents’ sleeves to take them to the local cycle shop to gaze upon Honda Mini Trails and the like.
Knievel prepares for his famous jump. The failed jump earned Knievel millions of dollars.
Bad Evel, however, seemed to diminish other riders, especially pro racers, if only by merely being Evel Knievel. The spotlight should have been focused on champions like Kenny Roberts and Roger DeCoster, riders whose performances lasted for 25 laps and 45-minute motos instead of just four measly seconds in the air.
Additionally, the boy from Butte, Montana, was something of a small-time shyster. Knievel tried his hand at everything from insurance salesman to big game hunting guide, and his business practices were often as shady as a Montana Ponderosa pine tree. Knievel guaranteed his hunters a big game kill—even if it meant sneaking them into nearby Yellowstone National Park to bag a protected elk!
Regardless of how the motorcycle journalists of the time felt about the man, Knievel’s Snake River Canyon jump was very big news in 1974, and it had to be covered. For six years, Knievel had been talking about jumping a canyon of some sort and when the U.S. Government made it clear that no one, not even Evel Knievel, was going to jump the Grand Canyon, he switched his focus to the Snake River Canyon, eyeing a parcel that was located on private property.
Unless he swapped out the pushrod V-twin for a jet engine, Evel’s Harley-Davidson XR-750 was certainly not capable of generating enough speed to clear a 4000-foot chasm, so he enlisted the help of Robert Truax, a U.S. Navy engineer, to design his canyon jumper. Dubbed the “Skycycle,” it bore no resemblance to any motorcycle ever produced and was even registered with the State of Idaho as an “airplane.” Truax and his team built three Skycycles, the first two used for test flights. Even though the tests revealed that the design was flawed, Knievel was running out of funds and pushed forward with the September 8 launch.
Knievel himself had been a motocross racer, so in the days preceding the big event, he sponsored his own race, offering a record purse to the world’s top riders. Pierre Karsmakers, Marty Tripes and Marty Smith took the wins in the three classes, with each rider netting a cool $8000 for their wins. Karsmakers and Tripes swept their 500cc and 250cc motos, while Smith went 2-1 for the win in the 125cc class. The first-moto winner of the 125s was Bultaco’s Jim Pomeroy, credited with teaching a younger Knievel (known at that time as just Robert) how to wheelie a motorcycle!
Knievel hosted a high-profile motocross during the week of the jump with a $125,000 purse that attracted many of the country’s top racers.
Jump day was a hot one, as temperatures soared into the 90s for the crowd, whose numbers seemed to be in dispute. Cycle News reported a whopping “50,000-70,000,” while Sports Illustrated estimated the number to be closer to about 15,000. The event was broadcast on closed-circuit television, with viewers gathering in places like Madison Square Garden to see Evel do his thing.
Via crane, he was hoisted up to the Skycycle at 3:20 p.m., about 15 minutes behind schedule. A high school band played, a priest prayed and at 3:36 p.m., the steam splayed as Evel Knievel and the X-2 Skycycle launched, heading up the 108-foot take-off ramp for its trip over the Snake River Canyon.
Almost immediately, onlookers noticed that something was wrong. The Skycycle’s drogue parachute was out before Knievel was even clear of his own ramp. The premature deployment slowed the contraption drastically, eventually causing it to crash into the rim of the canyon. Men in rowboats feverishly paddled their way to the crumpled X-2 and pulled Knievel from the wreckage. Bloodied but unbowed, Evel walked away from Snake River, anything but a failure, having pocketed a cool $6 million from the event.
Pierre Karsmakers, Marty Smith and Marty Tripes were just some of the stars who competed in Knievel’s one-off MX race.
There was more big news on that day back in 1974. On the other side of the country, President Gerald Ford had just announced a “full, free and absolute pardon” of former president Richard Nixon, an event which also irked CN’s guest writer Schneiders. It was a bad weekend for the journalist, coast to coast.
Nixon might have been off the hook, but there would be no pardon for Evel Knievel from Cycle News. Schneiders’ dream of the daredevil being tossed into the Snake River by a torch-bearing mob of disappointed fans might not have come true. “But what happened,” he added, “was almost as good.” CN
