KEY POINTS:
Evel Knievel, motorcycle stuntman. Died aged 69.
Evel Knievel was the red-white-and-blue-spangled motorcycle daredevil whose jumps over crazy obstacles including Greyhound buses, live sharks and Idaho's Snake River Canyon made him an international figure in the 1970s.
Immortalised in Washington's Smithsonian Institution as "America's Legendary Daredevil", Knievel
was best known for a failed 1974 attempt to jump Snake River Canyon on a rocket-powered cycle and a spectacular crash at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas. He suffered nearly 40 broken bones before retiring in 1980.
"I think he lived 20 years longer than most people would have after so many injuries," said his son. Kelly Knievel, 47. "I think he willed himself into an extra five or six years."
Although Knievel dropped off the radar in the '80s, the image of the high-flying motorcyclist clad in patriotic, star-studded colours was never erased from public consciousness.
Knievel made a good living selling his autographs and endorsing products. Thousands came to Butte, Montana, every year as his legend was celebrated during the "Evel Knievel Days" festival.
"They started out watching me bust my ass and I became part of their lives," Knievel said. "People wanted to associate with a winner, not a loser. They wanted to associate with someone who kept trying to be a winner."
He began his daredevil career in 1965 when he formed a troupe called Evel Knievel's Motorcycle Daredevils, a touring show in which he performed stunts such as riding through fire walls, jumping over live rattlesnakes and mountain lions and being towed at 320km/h behind dragster race cars.
In the beginning, he charged US$500 for a jump over two cars parked between ramps.
He steadily increased the length of the jumps until, on New Year's Day 1968, he was nearly killed when he jumped 46m across the fountains in front of Caesar's Palace. He cleared the fountains but the crash landing put him in hospital in a coma for a month.
His son, Robbie, successfully completed the same jump in 1989.
In the years after the Caesar's crash, the fee for Evel's performances increased to US$1 million for his jump over 13 buses at Wembley Stadium in London - the crash landing broke his pelvis - to more than US$6 million for the attempt to clear the Snake River Canyon in Idaho in a rocket-powered Skycycle. The parachute malfunctioned and deployed after take-off. Strong winds blew the cycle into the canyon, landing him close to the swirling river below.
In 1975, he jumped 14 Greyhound buses at Kings Island in Ohio.
Knievel decided to retire after a jump in the winter of 1976 in which he was again seriously injured. He suffered a concussion and broke both arms in an attempt to jump a tank full of live sharks in the Chicago Amphitheatre.
Knievel also dabbled in movies and TV, starring as himself in Viva Knievel and with Lindsay Wagner in an episode of Bionic Woman.
Born Robert Craig Knievel in the copper mining town of Butte, Montana, in 1938, Knievel was raised by his grandparents.
Outstanding in track and field, ski jumping and ice hockey at Butte High School, Knievel went on to win the Northern Rocky Mountain Ski Association Class A Men's ski jumping championship in 1957 and played with the Charlotte Clippers of the Eastern Hockey League in 1959.
Knievel also worked in the Montana copper mines, served in the Army, ran his own hunting guide service, sold insurance and ran Honda motorcycle dealerships.
At various times and in different interviews, Knievel claimed to have been a swindler, a card thief, a safe cracker and a hold-up man. The name Evel, a corruption of Evil, was bestowed on him by a jailer in Montana.
Evel Knievel married hometown girlfriend, Linda Joan Bork, in 1959. They separated in the early 1990s. They had four children, Kelly, Robbie, Tracey and Alicia.
- AP