Daredevil stuntman Evel Knievel dead
By Robert Green in Florida

December 01, 2007 11:42am

DAREDEVIL Evel Knievel, who dodged death in spectacular motorcycle leaps and
crashes in a life full of showmanship, died today at the age of 69.

"I just spoke with him last night. He seemed to be in good spirits," said
Knievel's lawyer, Richard Fee, adding he died in the Tampa Bay area of
Florida where he recently made his home.

The front page of the tempestuous showman's official website -
http://www.evelknievel.com - read simply "Robert Craig 'Evel' Knievel
October 17, 1938 - November 30, 2007". The site quickly became inaccessible
as it presumably was deluged by hits.

"Anybody can jump a motorcycle," he once told Esquire magazine. "The trouble
begins when you try to land it."

Knievel - who retired in 1981 after breaking more than 40 bones in his body,
including his back seven times - had been ill for some time, suffering from
a lung disease.

He recently gave what he said "may be the last interview I ever do" to the
December issue of Maxim magazine and battled rap singer Kanye West for
infringing his trademark in the Touch the Sky video, in which West appears
as "Evel Kanyevel" and wears a white jumpsuit like the one Knievel made
famous.

The two reached a settlement on Tuesday.

In his heyday, the king of all daredevils dressed like a superhero in a red,
white and blue leather jumpsuit with a cape and cane, his hair sculpted back
in a tall pompadour.

Knievel's greatest stunt turned out to be a failure when on September 8,
1974, he tried to ride a rocket-powered motorcycle across the Snake River
Canyon in Idaho.

With a pay-per-view television audience watching, the parachute deployed
when his Skycycle X-2 was only two-thirds across, sending the cycle into the
canyon wall.

It landed partly in the river but Knievel walked away with minor injuries.

For a jump over 13 double-decker buses in London's Wembley Stadium in 1975,
he was paid $US1 million ($1.14 million), a fortune at the time, according
to Maxim.

One of Knievel's motorcycles - a 1972 Harley-Davidson XR-750 - is in the
Smithsonian's National Museum of American History in Washington, DC.

His final years were plagued by pain from his accidents, as well as
pulmonary fibrosis, a scarring of the lungs.

"God never made a tougher son of a bitch than me," Knievel told USA Today in
an interview published in January.

The reporter described Knievel, who was 68 at the time, as feeble and
reliant on an oxygen tank and an implanted drug pump to relieve his pain.

He spent almost a month in a coma in 1968 after he crashed while jumping the
fountains at the Caesars Palace casino-hotel in Las Vegas. There were more
serious injuries when he tried to clear a tank full of sharks in Chicago in
1976.

"If you don't know about pain and trouble, you're in sad shape," he told
Esquire. "They make you appreciate life."

Knievel's personal life was at times almost as painful as his job. He had
trouble with the law starting as a teenager, went through bankruptcy and was
estranged for years from his son, Robbie, who also became a motorcycle
daredevil.

Knievel did not quit drinking until undergoing a liver transplant in 1999.

Born in Butte, Montana, he said he was inspired at the age of eight when he
saw an auto daredevil show.

He was dubbed "Evil Knievel" by a jailer in Montana after crashing his
motorcycle while fleeing from police.

He later changed the spelling to "Evel" as his daredevil career took off to
avoid being perceived as a bad guy.

Knievel was married twice and had four children.

From
http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,22852480-5006003,00.html

Evel Knievel was the older brother of Leroy Knievel, who changed the
spelling of his last name to "Knevil" in 1981 in order to avoid unwanted
attention.