Legend’s healthier than Evel
CLEARWATER, Fla. – Evel Knievel has trouble 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, 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 said. “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 feats 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,” said 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.
“Over time his legend has kind of snowballed,” said 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.