Top daredevil Knievel dead

He survived spectacular wrecks but dies of natural causes at 69

By RICHARD SEVERO
THE NEW YORK TIMES

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Evel Knievel, the hard-living, death-defying adventurer who went from stealing motorcycles to riding them in a series of spectacular airborne stunts in the 1960s and '70s that brought him worldwide fame as the quintessential daredevil performer, died Friday in Clearwater, Fla. He was 69.

His death was confirmed by a granddaughter, Krysten Knievel, The Associated Press reported. Knievel had been in failing health for years with diabetes and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, an incurable lung condition. In 1999, he underwent a liver transplant after nearly dying of hepatitis C, which he believed he had contracted through a blood transfusion after one of his many violent spills.

Only a few days before his death, he and the rap artist Kanye West announced they had settled a federal lawsuit over West's use of Knievel's trademarked image in a music video.

Bee editor remembers Evel Knievel

Knievel amazed and horrified onlookers in 1968 by vaulting his motorcycle 50 yards over the fountains of Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, only to land in a bone-breaking crash.

He then continued to win fame and fortune by getting huge audiences to watch him -- typically dressed in star-spangled red, white and blue -- roar his motorcycle up a ramp, fly over 10, 15 or 20 cars parked side by side and come down on another ramp. Perhaps his most spectacular stunt, another disaster, was an attempt to jump an Idaho canyon on a rocket-powered motorcycle in 1974.

Knievel's showmanship, skill and disdain for death were so admired that he became a folk hero. John Herring's song "Evel Knievel" was a hit and both Sam Elliott and George Hamilton have played him in movies. In the 1970s and '80s, Evel Knievel toys had sales in the hundreds of millions for Ideal and other companies.

Performing stunts hundreds of times, Knievel repeatedly shattered bones as well as his bikes. When he was forced to retire in 1980, he told reporters that he was "nothing but scar tissue and surgical steel."

By his own account, he underwent as many as 15 major operations to relieve severe trauma and repair broken bones -- skull, pelvis, ribs, collarbone, shoulders and hips.

"I created the character called Evel Knievel, and he sort of got away from me," he said.

His health had also been compromised by years of heavy drinking; he told reporters that at one point he was consuming a half a fifth of whiskey a day, washed down with beer chasers.

Robert Craig Knievel was born in the copper-mining town of Butte, Mont. He acquired the name Evel as a boy.

Arrested for stealing hubcaps, he was taken to jail, where the police were holding a man named Knofel, whom they called "Awful Knofel."

They decided to call Robert "Evil Knievel." The name stuck, and some years later, Knievel legally took the name Evel, changing the "i" to "e" because, he said, he thought it looked better.