Evel Knievel

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Knievel in the 1970s

Robert Craig "Evel" Knievel, Jr. (born October 17, 1938 in Butte , Montana , † November 30, 2007 in Clearwater , Florida ) was an American motorcycle stuntman . He achieved worldwide fame through his spectacular motorcycle jumps and stunt shows.

Life

The name originated in 1953 when Knievel was caught stealing hubcaps and arrested. The guard then joked that he had arrested "Evil Knievel". The name was later changed to Evel Knievel in order to avoid a connection with the word evil (English for "bad"; cf. German "evil"). In his youth, Knievel was a talented athlete and ski jumper . Until the beginning of his show career, he made his living as an insurance agent and miner, among other things.

In 1965 he founded "Evel Knievel's Motorcycle Daredevils", from 1966 he started alone. On December 31, 1967, while trying to jump over the fountain at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas , he sustained several fractures. However, for marketing reasons, it was claimed that he was in a coma. In the years that followed, he repeatedly delighted people all over the world with breathtaking actions, such as jumping over 50 cars in Los Angeles . The long-planned jump over the Snake River Canyon failed due to a defect in Knievels braking parachute . On May 31, 1975, Knievel announced his retirement in front of 90,000 spectators at Wembley Stadium in London . This was preceded by a failed attempt to jump over 13 buses. Immediately after the fall, he took a microphone and, despite a broken hip, told the spectators in the stadium that they were the last people to have seen him jump live. In fact, he made a few more jumps after that and only ended his career in January 1977 after a failed jump over a shark tank, in which he and a cameraman were seriously injured.

After retiring, he supported his son Robbie in his stunt shows. This later succeeded in jumping over the Grand Canyon . In total, Evel Knievel had 38 accidents in his life, some of which resulted in multiple fractures, a total of 433 fractures. In the video for the single "Touch the Sky" by Kanye West, he plays the role of Evel Knievel and Pamela Anderson the role of his girlfriend. He is played by George Eads in the biographical feature film "Evel Knievel - A Life at the Limit" . He also played himself on an episode of The Seven Million Dollar Wife . A few months before his death, Knievel made a Christian confession after, according to his own statement, "ran away from God for decades" and "lived in sin". He described his conversion as the greatest possible change in his entire life so far. He gave his very personal testimony to his experiences in God in the “ Hour of Power ” service.

Evel Knievel died of lung failure on November 30, 2007 in Clearwater, Florida at the age of 69 . He was buried in his birthplace, Butte, in Mountain View Cemetery.

Honors and mentions

  • Peter Gabriel von Genesis sings in the album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway in the song Riding the Scree "Evel Knievel you got nothing on me"
  • You can play Evel Knievels in several computer games . The first was Stunt Cycle in 1976 .
  • Evel Knievel was the name of one of the first electronic pinball machines from Bally in 1977 ; an electromechanical version of the device had already been released a few months earlier.
  • Various toy manufacturers brought Knievel to the market as a functional stunt doll with a motorcycle.
  • In his unpublished song Sell ​​it and they will come on the Ghost of Tom Joad tour 1995-97, which was part of the live program , Bruce Springsteen addressed a TV advertisement by Knievels for an anti-pain reliever.
  • In the James Bond film The Man with the Golden Gun , Roger Moore asks Sheriff JW Pepper, shortly before the spectacular car stunt : "Have you ever heard of Evel Knievel?"
  • Also in the film Armageddon - The Last Judgment , AJ Frost (Ben Affleck) asks the Russian cosmonaut shortly before jumping over a canyon: “Have you ever heard of Evel Knievel?” To which he replies: “No, I was never in Star Wars. "
  • In 2008 a wooden roller coaster was named after him, but it was renamed American Thunder in 2010 .
  • Also in 2008, the film Mat Hoffman's Tribute to Evel Knievel was released in commemoration of the 1st anniversary of death.
  • In their 2011 album Dem Teufel ein Gebet , the German rockers from 9mm Knievel honor with a song of this title.
  • In their 2013 album Between Dog and Wolf , the punk and independent rockers from New Model Army honor Knievel with a song of this title.
  • In the series The Simpsons , the character Captain Lance Murdock was introduced in the episode "The Devil's Leap" , which refers to Knievel. Murdock is a motorcycle stuntman who ends up in the hospital and says he has "broken every bone in his body". In this episode, Bart tries to jump the Springfield Gorge on his skateboard.
  • In the film Hot Rod - Full Throttle Through Hell , the protagonist, a self-proclaimed stuntman, tries to emulate Knievel by jumping over 15 school buses.

Web links

Commons : Evel Knievel  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Pure Evel: American Legend; TV documentary, UK 2013
  2. ↑ abclocal.go.com ( Memento from October 18, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ Pinball machine in the Internet Pinball Database
  4. ↑ Lance Murdock. simpsonspedia.net, June 9, 2014, accessed January 6, 2016 .
personal data
SURNAME Knievel, Evel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Knievel, Robert Craig Jr. (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American motorcycle stuntman
DATE OF BIRTH October 17, 1938
PLACE OF BIRTH Butte , Montana , United States
DATE OF DEATH November 30, 2007
Place of death Clearwater , Florida , United States