When Evel Calls

When Evel calls

UP FRONT

David Edwards

THESE DAYS, IT'S NOT EASY BEING EVEL Knievel. At 59, the World's Greatest Daredevil is paying the price for his former fame. In all, he's undergone 15 major operations to mend his oft-busted body, and spent a total of three years in hospitals-more than a month of that time in comas. Today, grayhaired and sallow-cheeked, he's recuperating from yet another surgery, this one to reconstruct his crumbling pelvis and insert a titanium hip. The old gladiator, who used to soar through the air on bellowing motorcycles, now shuffles around behind a walker.

Knievel is on the phone from his home in Clearwater, Florida. He wants to talk. The subject? Himself, of course, specifically the story about him we ran in our March issue.

"The article that Cycle World fea tured about me was much appre ciated-with the exception of some comments made by people who I thought were much more intelligent than they really are," he begins.

Those comments centered around Knievel's grand failure, the botched jump of Idaho's Snake River Canyon aboard his rocket-powered X-2 Sky Cycle (a "big tin can," he calls it today). Almost 25 years after the event, Knievel still bristles at insinuations that the early deployment of his drogue chute and subsequent crash-landing on the near side of the gorge was an orchestrated dodge meant to keep him from sploosh ing into the drink and drowning.

"I built three Sky Cycles," Knievel explains. "We test-fired the first two to see if they would make it across the canyon. Both of them went right into the river, but I was out of money and time. I had to get into the third Sky Cycle-the TV date was set, closed-cir cuit theaters and coliseums were sold out all over the free world. I had to go."

After sitting strapped into the rocket for more than an hour waiting in vain for a 30-knot headwind to subside, it was time for blastoff. As Knievel recalls, "When the countdown reached 5, I closed my eyes and said, `My dear God, forgive me my sins, bless my family and take care of them, here I come...'"

A thousand feet high and halfway across the canyon, the errant drogue popped open the main parachute. The Sky Cycle drifted backwards. Knievel, fearing a watery landing, struggled to loosen his safety harness. As it turned out, he impacted a rocky ledge, bounced once, and came to rest a scant 20 feet from the river's edge. He emerged bloodied but very much alive.

"I really get discouraged and kind of heartbroken," he says, "when peo ple say it was a rip-off, that I planned it that way, that I pulled the ripcord. Yeah. bullshit."

And then, Knievel's tone changes, the words come slower, softer. "I truly hope those doubters never have to hold their wife and children in their arms and pray the prayers I did the night be fore that canyon jump," he says. "I know what it's like to be on death row, to have a gun pointed at your head." This last is delivered in a quivering voice fighting back tears. "I'm sorry," he says after an awkward pause, "but you can see how this still affects me." There would be more jumps-and more crashes, more broken bonesafter Snake River, but as the Seventies came to a close, so did Knievel's ca reer. It was not a pretty transition. "I was a gladiator, and I couldn't fight anymore," he told Icon magazine in a recent interview. "My arms were broke, my legs were broke and my heart was broke."

On the phone, he says, "Everything came to a stop back in the late `70s and early `80s due to depression and drinking, knowing that I would never again hear the crowds' cheers." Then a former publicist wrote a tell-all book and Knievel, no doubt fueled by a few belts of his beloved Wild Turkey, went after the man with a baseball bat. That incident landed him in the L.A. Coun ty lockup for six months-in a cell next to Charlie Manson, no less! A quote from the Icon article gives some in sight into Knievel's dilemma: "Eve! Knievel was a character I created. He was even hard for me to live with sometimes. He wouldn't do anything I told him, the dumb sonovabitch."

Knievel claims he made about $35 million in his jumping career. Most of that is now gone-along with the minks, the diamonds, the Rolls-Royces, the Learjets, the luxury yachts. But almost two decades after his last jump, he~s not without earning potential. Gen-Xers, especially snowboarders and BMXers, have taken him to heart. As Extremist No. 1, he's now a bonafide cult hero, with ESPN2 ad spots and endorsement deals for stunt bicycles. This Christ mas, a new line of Evel Knievel action toys will be on the shelves.

There's talk of another Knievel movie, a $60 million blockbuster with hunky Matthew McConaughey in the title roll. Director Marco Brambilla claims the film will be in the vein of Raging Bull or The Right Stuff"a spectacle, very much like the man himself," he says. The California Motorcycle Company is trying to set itself apart from the jungle of Harley Davidson cloners by marketing a se ries of five signature Knievel modelseach named after one of his famous (or infamous) jumps.

After years of icy relations, he's now reconciled with son Robbie, a secondgeneration stunt rider who just set a world's record for distance jumped. "Robbie, without a doubt, is the best motorcycle jumper and performer in the world," proud Pa Knievel says. "He has the guts to pull the trigger, no mat ter how far the landing ramp is-so much farther than I ever imagined."

Knievel still has battles left to fight. "Liver disease, hepatitis C, staff infec tion of the blood and diabetes-I've got them all, along with this recent opera tion. I'm fighting every day to get back on my feet and feel healthy," he says, before making an appeal to his fans. "Those of you who prayed for me be fore I jumped, thanks, I could sure use some more prayers to help me now." Happy landings, Evel.