We know quite a lot about Robert Craig "Evel" Knievel. We know he was born in 1938 in Butte, Montana, was an above-average athlete as a kid, dropped out of high school, worked a host of blue-collar jobs and generally raised a lot of hell growing up. When he happened to see a Joie Chitwood stunt show one day as a youngster, the seeds of a lifetime of two-wheeled daredevildom and celebrity were sown.
We know Knievel attempted some 300 jumps during his motorcycle career, 276 of which were successful. We know he broke more than 40 bones (some two and three times each) and inflicted major trauma to his body in those 24 crashes. The most spectacular were his ugly, nose-high leap over the Caesars Palace fountains in '68; his pelvisbreaking endo over 13 double-decker buses at the U.K.'s Wembley Stadium in '75; and the ill-fated leap over the Snake River Canyon on his part-motorcycle/part-rocket Skycycle in '74.
We know the spoils he earned from these death-defying stunts: the fame, money, women and worldwide recognition of his ability and rawboned chutzpah. And we know the darkness it brought: the boozing, the assault arrests, the financial problems, the lawsuits.
What we don't exactly know, however, is how to view the guy. Opinions range from petty-criminal-gotten-lucky to true-blue motorcycling legend. The truth lies somewhere in the middle, of course. There's no doubt he lived a checkered life, sometimes running afoul of the law and what's typically considered proper behavior. But it's also true that Evel was a heavy inspiration, an icon kids the world over looked up to, someone who lived and openly promoted the live-your-dream ethos of risk-takers everywhere-something '70s-era 12-year-olds responded to as fiercely as Schwinn Sting-Rays.
I watched Knievel jump a line of cars in a Cleveland convention center sometime in '71 or '72. The booming Harley XR-750, the red-white-and-blue bike and leathers, the huge wooden ramps, the absolute cojones it took to launch that thing at speed...it was mindblowing, and put him on a pedestal as high as anyone in my book. And later, as I learned of the guy's warts, somehow they didn't matter.
And that was Knievel's magic, why he became such an icon not only in motorcycling, but worldwide. Rest in peace, man.