In a bid to promote the Butte Bombers and stir up some revenue, Knievel somehow managed to convince the 1960 Czechoslovakian hockey team to play them in a warm-up match prior to the Olympics. Knievel was ejected from the game in the third period, and left the stadium.

When the Czechoslovakian officials went to the stadium’s box office to collect expenses money they’d been promised, workers there discovered that the game receipts were missing. To avoid an international incident, the U.S Olympic Committee had to step in and cover the Czechoslovakian’s expenses.

At this time in his life, Knievel was no stranger to controversy. Historians, for example, talk of his time spent as a “private security specialist” in Butte; an operation where he would offer his sentry services to local businesses. What Knievel didn’t admit till much later in life, re: this particular matter, was that he would often rob the businesses that didn’t sign up for his protection. If that sounds like a page straight out of the mafia playbook, it’s because it basically was.

“Knievel was no stranger to controversy”

Following the birth of his first son, Knievel, an experienced hunter and fisherman, started the Sur-Kill Guide Service in order to support the family financially. He promised his clients that they’d get the big game animal they asked for, or be fully refunded. Business was good until it was discovered that he’d been taking people into Yellowstone National Park to hunt illegally. Off the back of this, authorities immediately ordered him to stop poaching.

Knievel then joined the motocross circuit but, despite some moderate success, he was struggling to make ends meet when in 1962 a motocross accident resulted in him breaking his collarbone and shoulder. After doctors told him to stop racing for a minimum of six months, Knievel took the kind of decision all daredevil spirits dread – he got himself a nine-to-five office job selling insurance.

Never one for wanting to let the down the crowd, after recovering from his injury Knievel returned to Barstow to finish what he’d started. More jumps, successful and unsuccessful followed, and further painful injuries seemingly became part of the routine.

The first of Evel Knievel’s most famous stunts occurred on New Year’s Eve 1967 at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. The stunt involved an attempted 141ft (43m) motorcycle jump over the hotel’s iconic fountain. It did not go as planned, with Knievel coming off the bike on landing and suffering a crushed pelvis and femur, fractures to various bones, and severe concussion. After ABC bought the crash footage and televised it, Knievel’s fame went to a whole new level.

Other famous failed Knievel stunts include the time he tried and failed to fly across Idaho’s Snake River Canyon in a steam-powered rocket, and the time he tried and failed to jump a motorbike across 13 single-decker buses in front of a crowd of 90,000 at London’s Wembley Stadium. Knievel’s dream had always been to jump his motorbike across the Grand Canyon but after the Interior Department denied him airspace for such a stunt, Knievel was forced to switch his attention elsewhere – eventually settling on Snake River.

“I will never, ever, ever jump again. I’m through”

After the crash at Wembley in 1975, Knievel announced to the watching public: “Ladies and gentleman of this wonderful country, I’ve got to tell you that you are the last people in the world who will ever see me jump. Because I will never, ever, ever jump again. I’m through.”

This wasn’t to be the end though. Perhaps because he was hooked on the adrenaline of jumping, or perhaps because he craved a few more paydays, Knievel signed up to more stunts – including a comeback performance at Kings Island in Ohio where he successfully jumped over 14 greyhound buses. A crash in 1977, that occured while practising a stunt which involved jumping over 13 sharks, was to be Knievel’s swansong. Scheduled jumps in Australia, in 1979, and Puerto Rico, in 1980, did not go ahead.

By the end of his 15-year daredevil career between 1965 and 1980, Knievel had attempted or landed over 75 ramp-to-ramp motorbike jumps.

How Many Bones Did Evel Knievel Break?

An entry in the 1975 Guinness Book of World Records states that Knievel had suffered more than 433 bone fractures, making him the survivor of “most bones broken in a lifetime.”

This number though may have been greatly exaggerated as Evel reckons the number was 35, with his son Robbie, who went on to be a stunt performer in his own right, putting Knievel’s broken bones number at somewhere between 40 and 50.

Evel Knievel’s Personal Life

Knievel married twice. During his time with first wife Linda, who he was with for 38 years, Knievel fathered four children (Kelly, Robbie, Tracey and Alicia). Clearly inspired by their father’s example, his teenage sons Kelly and Robbie would even perform at Knievel’s shows. Robbie, in particular, went on to become a famous daredevil in his own right – going on to jump a section of the Grand Canyon in 1999.

Evel Knievel was charged in 1977 for attacking his former promoter Shelly Saltman with a baseball bat, after he’d alleged that Knievel was a drug user who acted abusively towards his family. This resulted in a six-month jail sentence that contravened a lucrative contract Knievel had with Ideal Toys. At this stage in his career, Ideal Toys provided him with his main source of income so the loss was keenly felt. Factor in a cripplingly expensive unpaid tax demand in 1981, and he was left with no choice but to file for bankruptcy.

In 1999, Knievel married Krystal Kennedy. The wedding ceremony took place on a purpose-built platform built on the fountains at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas – scene of one of Knievel’s most iconic jumps over 30 years earlier. Despite divorcing from him in 2001, and with Krystal being granted a restraining order against him, the pair eventually sorted things out; living together until Knievel’s death in 2007. Aged 69, Knievel died of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis – a condition which had plagued the latter stages of his life.

Evel Knievel In Popular Culture

1977 saw the release of ‘Viva Knievel!’ Starring Evel Knievel as himself, the plot centres on the daredevil being lured to Mexico by drug dealers who want to kill him for his truck (The Godfather II, it is not).

Three months after the film’s premiere, Knievel committed the aforementioned crime against Shelly Saltman. His conviction for the incident made the film commercially unattractive to an international market, and it fell into obscurity. At the time of writing, ‘Viva Knievel!’ has an average rating of 2.8/10 on IMDB and 17% on Rotten Tomatoes.

In 1971, six years before ‘Viva’, an Evel Knievel film called simply ‘Evel Knievel’ was released. The film, that starred George Hamilton as Knievel, reflects on major aspects of Knievel’s life such as his relationship with his wife Linda and the legendary jump at Caesars Palace.

The Simpsons episode ‘Bart The Daredevil’, which first aired in 1990, features a stunt performer called Lance Murdock – a character clearly inspired by Evel Knievel. In the episode, Murdock successfully jumps his motorbike over a tank filled with a number of dangerous animals before falling in while celebrating. Murdock’s actions inspire Bart to try and jump his skateboard over Springfield Gorge. Fearing for his safety, Homer stops Bart from going through with the stunt before accidentally attempting it himself. Matt Groening, the show’s creator, rates the episode as his favourite of that series.

In 2007,  Kanye West settled a lawsuit with Evel Knievel after the rapper parodied the daredevil’s Snake River rocket stunt in his music video for ‘Touch The Sky’. The video saw Kanye West dub himself ‘Evel Kanyevel’ and was criticised by Knievel for its “vulgar, sexual nature.” Knievel took issue with the fact that his image was being used, as he put it, to “promote West’s filth to the world.”

Knievel died just days after the settlement with West.

Read More:

Famous Evel Knievel Stunts | 6 of the Best

Evel Knievel Quotes | 13 Famous Lines From History’s Most Iconic Stunt Performer