AJC > Sports > Columnists > Archives > 2008 > January > 05 > Entry
DEL.ICIO.USKnievel flew above radar
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Evel Knievel may be dead, but they won’t let him rest in peace. First, a few words on Robert Craig Knievel himself and we’ll move on to the flying leap planned in his name New Year’s Eve in Las Vegas — in case you missed it, which most of us did. On the 40th anniversary of Knievel’s flight over the fountains at Caesars Palace on his motorcycle, this Australian dude planned to fly the distance of a football field on a machine of his own.
Evel was a pretty nice guy, once you scraped off the scowl and the clownish hardware. Of course, by this time he had switched from bone-breaking jumps to golf. Oh, he wanted strokes on the first tee, but he had no established handicap and he would dicker with you to the last green. He was, I’d guess, about a plus-12, but he wanted you to think he was in the neighborhood of scratch.
He’d come to Atlanta for some sort of event and stayed over a few days, sometime in the early 1980s. He traveled in a motor home, and it was some kind of palace on wheels. His wife (and a lovely person she was) presided over the scene and could whip up a rather sumptuous meal on wheels. I guess that Mr. Knievel must have relieved me of around 50 bucks, or more, on the golf course during the week, but it was worth the experience. Plus, he sent me one of those early steel-head drivers, thoughtfully left-handed, and I still have it.
As I’ve said, Evel was through jumping things by that time. Previously, every time he had advertised a jump, all hospitals in the area prepared the emergency room for a casualty. It was stock stuff to say that he must have broken every bone in his body. A jump at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas was his real introduction to the front page and national news. The distance was 150 feet. He and his machine cleared 149, and Evel went the rest of the way and several feet more skidding on his stomach. He was in a coma for 29 days.
He jumped here and there, he cleared some, missed some, and of course, there was a widely exploited leap across Snake River Canyon in Idaho. Oh how the suckers bit. Television had him covered like a presidential inauguration. Municipal Auditorium was packed for the pay-for-view telecast. I know I was there. Suffice it to say that the contraption he created for the “flight” barely got liftoff. But at least he walked away.
What Knievel had done created an outbreak of copycats. So it was on a quiet July 3 afternoon I looked up from my desk and standing there in front of me was a blustery Phil Silvers-type, full of hype, and standing beside him was a shy kid, about 18, I’d say. He was a sprouting jumper in pursuit of fame and had leaped over stuff before. On Independence Day, the shy kid was going to jump over 16 buses in Columbus. The kid barely said a word, but blustering Phil did all the talking. The next day the kid jumped, he came up short and they give him a nice funeral.
About the leaper from Australia, he made it, I hear. Never saw it. Few did, from what I know. Never made the papers. Never even made “SportsCenter” on ESPN. His name, in case you want to look it up, was Robbie Maddison. Knievel missed it, too. He was 69. After all those attempts at self-destruction, he died in a hospital bed peacefully.
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Comments
By Joe Cooke
January 5, 2008 8:17 PM | Link to this
He was a true American original.
Oh, and he did inspire copycats, to be sure…I was one of`em. He got me to go airborne on my purple, K-Mart spyder-bike. Boy, those banana-seats were harder than they looked…I may still have a bruise…it’s just not in a convenient place to check, so I’ll have to assume it’s still there.
It should also be noted that the the Evel Knievel Stunt-bike was possibly the greatest Christmas present EVER, rivaled only by the Daisy Red Ryder. Rest in Peace, Evel.
-J
By CooterMcGrudder
January 5, 2008 10:40 PM | Link to this
Evel slept with my momma and my momma’s sister ate drank and stole everything in the house he was a bum would try anything for a buck was allergic to hard work he did alot more bad then good and he meant to
By Boots
January 6, 2008 12:10 AM | Link to this
While Evil never slept with my momma or any other family member that I’m aware of, he was, indeed, a cultural icon and pop figure.
Thanks for the memories.
By Jack Mangus
January 6, 2008 11:37 AM | Link to this
The “shy kid” you refer to was Bob Pleso and he attempted to jump 16 cars, not buses, at a drag race strip in Phenix City, Alabama, across the river from Columbus.
By Deviant Dean
January 6, 2008 11:41 AM | Link to this
Evel used an early and mid seventies harley davidson XR750 flattracker,hardly and suspension travel,so when you bad-asses want to make fun of him or beat his records…use the same equiptment as he did or get off the back porch.
By Bri Esterle
January 6, 2008 1:06 PM | Link to this
Not only did ESPN Sportscenter show the jump by Robbie Maddison, it was a live 90-minute show on ESPN on New Year’s Eve! Google “Robbie Maddison”…I think more than a few people know about this kid now. And Evel’s widow and other family members were with Robbie when he jumped.
By Ken Stallings
January 6, 2008 3:07 PM | Link to this
Evil Knievel lost a lot of legitimacy after the clearly staged Snake River Canyon abort. The degree of aerodynamics needed to pilot (that’s the proper term) a rocket across that canyon was clearly beyond the engineering of that craft he sat in.
Even if the rocket cleared the distance, I doubt seriously Knievel had a clue how to actually pilot the thing to a safe touchdown. That’s the sort of stuff it takes a few years of training in the USAF or USN to master.
I give him credit for common sense that he knew he’d splat on the opposite rim of the canyon if he really tried it. Instead, a convenient parachute deployment arrested the contraption after it left the rail and he floated down and survived.
Smart, but as you said a sucker play that turned people off supporting his future efforts. I preferred the parachute to seeing him explode on the far granite. I would have preferred more he simply had the courage to call the whole thing off as impossible.
Robbie Maddison not only set a new distance record, but was unsatisfied with it and did an ad-hoc do-over. Since I live in Las Vegas, I can confirm the on-air comments about the winds. They were swirling and strong.
He didn’t do any better on the second attempt, but it took real gusto to set the record and be unhappy enough to try to make it better.
I must have been one of the few who watched it. I was impressed. He did a great job. It was old school … the kind of motorcycle jump that made Knievel famous.