At his home in Reno, Nevada, daredevil performer Robbie Knievel passed away on Friday. Like his father, Evel, Robbie rode motorbikes into the sky and performed a series of incredible air stunts. His age was sixty-five.
According to Kelly Knievel, his older brother, pancreatic cancer was the reason. During his 30-year career, Mr. Knievel—sometimes referred to as Kaptain Robbie Knievel—continued his father’s legacy of daring motorcycle stunt performances, landing over 350 leaps.
Mr. Knievel, adorned in a white leather suit adorned with stars, plunged 150 feet over the fountains at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas in 1989, in one of his most famous jumps. It was a nod to Evel Knievel, who reached new heights in the 1960s and 1970s thanks to a similar clearance of the same fountains in 1967—a feat that frightened onlookers and catapulted him to international stardom.
Years later, Robbie Knievel recalled as he jumped and shouted, “That was for you, Dad,” his father running up to embrace him while tears welled up in his eyes. “He had never shown such emotion before.”
Mr. Knievel leaped over 30 limos at the Tropicana Hotel in Las Vegas in 1998, more than 200 feet in the air. He leaped alone between the twin towers of the Jockey Club hotel in Las Vegas the next year while green and pink fireworks burst all around him. He reportedly told reporters afterwards, “This is crazy ’cause life is crazy,” according to The Las Vegas Sun.
In 1999, Mr. Knievel broke many ribs landing after hurtling over a portion of the Grand Canyon. It had been twenty-five years since his father’s failed attempt to use a steam-powered rocket to traverse Idaho’s Snake River Canyon; a parachute failure had sent him plunging into the jagged abyss below.
In addition to soaring over a line of military planes on the flight deck of the U.S.S. Intrepid in New York, Mr. Knievel leaped over an approaching steam train just moments before it hit his launch ramp.
Similar to his father, Robbie Knievel’s leaps caused numerous fractured bones, including multiple vertebrae. Essaying his bond with his dad in 2019, he said, “I am lucky I am still able to walk” on fatherly.com.
Robert Edward Knievel came into this world in Butte, Montana, on May 7, 1962. Of Linda (Bork) and Evel Knievel’s four children, he was the second-oldest. After a long battle with diabetes and the incurable lung disease idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, Evel Knievel passed away in 2007 at the age of 69.
As his brother put it, Robbie Knievel began riding motorcycles “when he was old enough to hang on to the handlebars,” captivated by his father’s daredevilries. He learned to ride a Honda mini motorcycle from his father, who would tie a rope around him, throw him in a ditch, and then pull him off the seat whenever he turned the throttle too far.
“See Evel Knievel Junior jump for 25 cents,” he posted on fatherly.com, and before long he was leaping over 10-speed bicycles and putting a banner outside the family’s house. After performing in Madison Square Garden for the first time at the tender age of eight, he and his father went on a cross-country tour of the US and Australia.
According to the essay, Robbie Knievel would thrill onlookers with “wheelie shows,” in which he would perform a series of leaps while balancing on his back tire. He dabbled in tile installation, a sawmill, and a bike shop, but motorcycle jumping was always his calling.
His motivations for performing motorcycle stunts were previously stated as “I do it for the excitement and the quick money” and “I think I was born” to be one. At the age of 19, he broke away from his family to pursue a solo career after an argument with his father. Even so, Evel Knievel was a lasting impact.
Mr. Knievel said how he had a fever and anxious just before jumping over ten parked vans, but he recalled his father’s words of wisdom: “It’s normal for you to be nervous.” He then proceeded to complete his daring jumps. Your performance will improve as the audience size increases.
Divorce was the result of Mr. Knievel’s marriage to Lorin Lullo. Maria Collins, Krysten Knievel-Hansson, Karmen Knievel, and two granddaughters are among Mr. Knievel’s surviving relatives. Two sisters, Tracey McCloud and Alicia Vincent, also survive him.
As Mr. Knievel put it in his memoir, he and his father spent his final years remembering “the crazy lives we’d lived, and how lucky we’d been time and time again.”
“My dad struggled with the idea of passing the baton to me,” he wrote. “He saw me as one of the many competitors who were trying to outjump him, but in reality I was his biggest fan.”
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