Posted on 05/20/2006 11:25:00 AM PDT by Extremely Extreme Extremist
(AP) CLEARWATER, Fla. Evel Knievel has trouble now just walking from his condo to the pool.
The '70s cultural icon and poster boy for fast living and derring-do is 67, his body broken by years of spectacular crashes and ravaged by a multitude of serious ailments. The king of the daredevils can hardly get out of bed most days, let alone straddle a Harley.
On bad days, Knievel wishes he had gone into another line of work. On better days, he doesn't regret a minute. Lung disease sometimes makes it hard for him to talk, but his stories still drip with swagger. He can be kind and gracious one minute, irascible and profane the next.
Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, an incurable condition, is scarring and hardening his lungs. He's recovering from a stroke and has diabetes. He's broken about 40 bones, is full of plates and titanium parts and is constantly in pain. Repeated concussions have affected his short-term memory.
The man who survived 300 perilous motorcycle jumps and once climbed into a rocket-powered cycle to fly over a canyon, now stays close to an oxygen tank, ingests 50 pills a day and sucks on lollipops that deliver fentanyl, a heavy-duty painkiller.
"People think I've been through something in my life from what they've seen on national television, my accident at Caesars Palace for instance," Knievel says. "Look at what the hell I'm going through now. How much can the human body endure?"
Knievel is preparing for his annual summer trip to his hometown of Butte, Mont., which celebrates his legend every July with the Evel Knievel Days festival. The event gets larger every year, but for him the journey gets more difficult.
"It's awful hard for me to see him like this," says Billy Rundle, an old friend and executive director of the festival, which attracted 50,000 people last year to see the daredevil.
His personal appearance days might be numbered, but one thing's for sure -- some 25 years after his last motorcycle jump, people still want a piece of Robert Craig Knievel, American folk hero.
The man who made millions risking his life earns a decent living now at the kitchen table signing thousands of autographs for dealers to resell. He endorses a few products and until recently made regular paid appearances with a 40-foot trailer full of his motorcycles and other curiosities, including the wrecked Skycycle he used in the unsuccessful jump at Snake River Canyon in Idaho in 1974.
The Evel Knievel Stunt Cycle, one of the best-selling toys of the '70s, is being sold again by Ideal Toys. The auction Web site eBay lists hundreds of Evel items for sale, from jigsaw puzzles to pinball machines. An Evel Knievel rock opera is in the works, and the Country Music Television channel will examine his life in a program May 28. He's done a couple TV cameos recently and still gets stacks of fan letters.
"Over time his legend has kind of snowballed," says Knievel biographer Steve Mandich. Other daredevils, including son Robbie, have made longer jumps, but Knievel was the original article, a brash showman in his signature red, white-and-blue leathers. Oddly enough, the horrific crashes, many captured by ABC's "Wide World of Sports" cameras, made him even more popular.
"He kept jumping longer and longer, and he kept crashing harder and harder, and he kept getting up and doing more stunts," Mandich says.
"I became part of their lives," Knievel says. "People wanted to associate with a winner, not a loser. They wanted to associate with someone who kept trying to be a winner."
Once a carouser of legendary proportions, Knievel slowed down after a near-fatal bout with Hepatitis C and a 1999 liver transplant. He lives with 36-year-old Krystal Kennedy-Knievel, his longtime partner who looks after him and helps with his business affairs. (They divorced in 2002 but remain together.)
He's got a few regrets but won't share them.
"No king or prince has lived a better life," he says. "You're looking at a guy who's really done it all. And there are things I wish I had done better, not only for me but for the ones I loved."
Death doesn't scare him. He's stared it down before, flying his motorcycle off countless ramps in countless packed arenas.
"I can't wait to meet God," he says, "and ask why he didn't make me go faster on some of those jumps, why he put me through all this pain. He knows I'm not evil."
Dang. I was waiting to see him jump a Denny's with his new rocket-powered walker.
Guy had some stones, that's for sure. No way I wouldn't jump over a caravan of cars on a cycle.
Huh? I saw him at a pro-am golf tournament around 1980. He was barely walking with a cane then. I figured he long ago quit walking.
I have an aunt and uncle that live in Butte and babysat Evel when he was a kid. They gave my brother and I a huge signed poster of Evel ("Happy Landings!") that I wish I still had.
The only guy who was ever happy to miss the bus.
I can't count the number of Evel Knievel "Stunt Cycles" that I had as a kid ;)
I found that, if you removed the little wires keeping his "action figure" semi-rigid, he flopped around just like in his real-life mishaps.
Other than Colonel Steve Austin, "The Six Million Dollar Man", he was THE hero for the 1970s.
I was there when he tried to jump the Snake River on his bike/rocket!
I don't think there is a bone he hasn't broken ... some multiple times.
The slow motion film of his Caesar's crash is very painful to watch.
Evil once asked my dad to build him a peroxide rocket motorcycle for the Snake River jump. That dude is nuts.
Hmmmm, Evil Kneivel is hanging on to life with the aid of painkillers and 50 pills a day.
Mohammed Ali doesn't know whats happening, where he is, or who he is.
I wonder how many years, and how much more these poor people will suffer, before the Lord calls them home.
We are given one body to last us a lifetime; burn it up early, and one can look to these people for the consequences. I lived my life pretty much the way I live it now. Aside from a Gal Bladder that wanted off early; everything else is intact and working to original factory specs. This Grandpa can still rough and tumble with the grandkids; I'll be taking them on cruises and to DisneyWorld. My mother and father (Great-Grandpa/ma to the kiddies) are still up and about, cruising across North America in an RV, and building houses for the needy; and churches for the faithful (Baptist, Catholic, Methodist, Luthern - they aren't picky).
Take reasonable care of yourself, and there's no reason you can't be entertaining the Great-Grandchildren too.
Are you serious? I didn't know that. I knew he was smug but I didn't know he was conceited.
I don't think any of us were expecting a comeback anytime soon.
He used a baseball bat on an unauthorized biographer, so the story seems plausible. Kneivel never apologized. The biographer merely recounted Kneivel's Chamberlain-like philandering, which Knievel was otherwise proud of.
Well I guess he's not quite so "Evil" any more. He's paying for those bad antics now.
"...I didn't know he was conceited."
What he did was way beyond conceited, E. That's plain nuts and very possibly a felony (or two).
Wow! That's impressive.
What ever this guy gets, he deserves in spades
LOL! Good one.
I had heard that he has planned one more stunt; Trying to make it accross Ethiopia in a catering truck.
Umm...what did he think was going to happen? Sounds like one of those guys who never expected to live past 40--and acted accordingly. Well, surprise, surprise. All those guys who do steriods should take notes.
He had the most dangerous temper one could imagine.
One afternoon, the bargirl took a little too long to get the drinks
to his table, so he threw an ashtray at her, and missed her head by inches.
Because he was "Evil" nobody complained, the guys there even where laughing
about it. I didn't go back to that course much when he was around.
There are many other stories of this punk, but the Mods wouldn't like me to share them, Im sure.
The worst part is him sounding so sorry for himself. Getting old is not for wimps. If he's so brave let him carry himself with dignity now. You can't live like that and then when you're old and busted up say it was all a mistake. Wonder what Robbie thinks of all this.
What a baby.
unauthorized biographer......HA HA HA.
Thats great, thanks for the laugh
This is a perfect example of
"Too much money, Too little Class"
I had one!! This was an awesome toy. The gyroscopic tricks you could do was amazing to a 6 year old kid.
That's over 25 years ago. Sounds like a lot of his problems are degenerative in nature. Lots of time to slide downhill...
I've heard similar stories as well. Glad I haven't ever run into him around town.
Bubba the Love Sponge, when he had a broadcast morning show, was notorious for messing with Evel on the air- playing phone pranks on him. What made it so entertaining was that Evel had NO sense fo humor, and actually hated Bubba. Some funny bits!
Sandy Burgular laughs at felonies.. Celebrity and democrat party affiliation is an written license to feloniate.. i.e. the Clintons..
Dang, I didn't listen to that channel with Bubba.
I was stuck on 970, still am.
He was playing in the tournament and was the only one using a cart.
Or was he going travel to Mecca wearing a cross?
The man is an idiot, a pure, certified blowhard. There is nothing admirable about embodying a death wish, then publicizing it as "derring-do." If he had just killed himself quietly, it would have made the obits right below the urn ads. But no, he's got to play pied piper to a generation of morons who have nothing else to get them excited.
Although I agree with some of your points, I have to grudgingly concede that he is some type of folk hero. Kind of like in the Ron Jeremy sense.
LOL
When they go, it most likely br 'home with the Lord'. It seems by their lifestyle that their 'home' will be somewhere else.
It is unprofitable for one to expect the Lord to welcome them when they rejected Him for their entire lives.
edit, that should be 'most likely won't be'.
Theer seems to have been either an error in transmission or fat fingers lol.
Ahhh, yes...the Kennedy Syndrome...
Do I read addiction?????? /sarcasm
nope, not going to hijack this thread.......
EVERYONE who is on long term NARCOTIC pain relievers becomes addicted to them. It is the nature of that type of medication.
That is why they are so tightly regulated and doctors are so reluctant to prescribe them unless absolutely necessary.
Also, the longet one is taking a particular dose, they become adjusted to it and it loses it's effectiveness reguiring ever larger doses. Once a person becomes accustomed to being on a particular narcotic, it becomes very difficult to stop taking it or to lessen the dosage.
Lowering the dosage or stopping it altogether generates withdrawall symtoms that are very difficult to deal with.
Good point.
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