The Times 30 Nov 2007 - Evel Knievel, the hard-living motorcycle daredevil whose jumps over buses, live sharks and Idaho’s Snake River Canyon made him an international icon in the 1970s, has died aged 69.
He had been in failing health for years and suffered from diabetes and pulmonary fibrosis, an incurable condition that damaged his lungs.
Knievel had undergone a liver transplant in 1999 after nearly dying of Hepatitis C, which is likely to have been contracted through a blood transfusion after one of his bone-shattering falls. His death was confirmed tonight by his granddaughter, Krysten.
Immortalised in the Washington’s Smithsonian Institution as America’s Legendary Daredevil, he was best known for a failed 1974 attempt to jump Snake River Canyon on a rocket-powered cycle and a spectacular crash at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas.
He suffered nearly 40 broken bones before he retired in 1980.
Although his ability to make headlines faded in the 1980s, Knievel had enjoyed a resurgence in popularity in recent years. In later years, he made a living selling his autographs and endorsing products.
In particular, thousands made the journey to Butte, Montana, every year during the “Evel Knievel Days" festival.
“They started out watching me bust my ass, and I became part of their lives,” he is quoted as having once said. “People wanted to associate with a winner, not a loser. They wanted to associate with someone who kept trying to be a winner.”
His death came just two days after it was announced that he and rapper Kanye West had settled a federal lawsuit over the use of Knievel’s trademarked image in a music video.
