Evel Knievel Biography

Evel Knievel brought the spirit of P.T. Barnum to daredevil motorcycle jumps in the 1960s and 1970s.

Dressed in his signature red, white and blue jumpsuit, Knievel would race his motorcycle up steep ramps and over obstacles, including the fountains in front of Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas (in 1967) and a row of 13 double-decker buses at London’s Wembley Stadium (in 1975). Often he crash-landed, thrilling viewers while breaking dozens of bones.

His most famous stunt was an attempted jump over Idaho’s Snake River Canyon in a rocket-powered “motorcycle” on September 8, 1974. The attempt failed when the craft’s parachute opened prematurely, but Evel Knievel survived. He retired in 1981; his son Robbie Knievel succeeded him as the family motorcycle daredevil.

Evel Knievel received a liver transplant in 1999, due to hepatitis C presumably contracted through blood transfusions after his many crashes. He was in poor health in his last years, thanks to a combination of hepatitis, pulmonary fibrosis, diabetes and the remnants of his daredevil injuries, and he died in 2007.