A Motorcycle Daredevil Like His Father, Robbie Knievel Dies At 60!
Like his father, Evel Knievel, Robbie Knievel was a daredevil performer who rode motorbikes into the air and pulled off a variety of breathtaking airborne stunts. Robbie Knievel passed away on Friday at his home in Reno, Nevada. He was 60.
He had pancreatic cancer, according to Kelly Knievel, his older brother.
As Kaptain Robbie Knievel, he continued his father’s legacy of performing bone-jarring motorcycle stunts, landing more than 350 jumps throughout his 30-year career.
In one of his most well-known jumps, Mr. Knievel leaped 150 feet over the fountains at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas in 1989 while wearing a star-studded, white leather costume. It served as a sort of homage to Evel Knievel, who had cleared the same fountains in 1967 only to crash horrifyingly and break his bones.
Years later, the son said that as he made the jump and stated, “That was for you, Dad,” “he ran up and held me, with tears in his eyes.” “I had never witnessed him so moved,”
At the Tropicana Hotel in Las Vegas in 1998, Mr. Knievel leaped more than 200 feet over 30 limousines. The following year, while pink and green fireworks were going off all around him, he leaped between the two Jockey Club hotel towers in Las Vegas without a net below.
Read more:
According to The Las Vegas Sun, Mr. Knievel told reporters after the incident that “life is wild” as his thumb hung from his leather “RK” belt buckle.
25 years after his father attempted to cross the Snake River Canyon in Idaho on a steam-powered rocket and experienced a parachute breakdown that sent him plummeting into the jagged chasm below, Robbie Knievel hurtled over part of the Grand Canyon in 1999, shattering numerous ribs on the landing.
Additionally, Mr. Knievel soared over a line of military aircraft on the deck of the U.S.S. Intrepid in New York and jumped over an approaching steam locomotive just seconds before it hit his takeoff ramp.
Like his father, Robbie Knievel’s leaps broke numerous bones, including several vertebrae. In an essay posted on fatherly.com in 2019 on his relationship with his father, he stated, “I am fortunate I am still able to walk.”
On May 7, 1962, Robert Edward Knievel was born in Butte, Montana. He was the second oldest of Evel Knievel’s four children, who in the 1960s and 1970s achieved international prominence as a motorcycle stunt performer.
Evel Knievel passed away in 2007 at the age of 69 after suffering from diabetes and incurable lung disease and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis for years.
Robbie Knievel began riding motorbikes “when he was old enough to hang on to the handlebars,” according to his brother, inspired by his father’s daring do.
His father put him in a ditch, tied a rope around him, and then yanked him off the seat if he unintentionally turned the throttle too much when teaching him to ride his first motorcycle, a Honda mini.
Soon, he was jumping over 10-speed bicycles and posting a banner that read, “See Evel Knievel Junior jump for 25 cents” on the gate outside the family’s home, he recalled on fatherly.com.
Robbie Knievel, daredevil son of Evel Knievel, dies at 60 – ABC13 Houston😞😞 RIP🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻 https://t.co/WJbXqZDO4J
— 🪳♠️🪳Jessica🪳♠️🪳 (@JessicaVanaver2) January 13, 2023
At the age of 8, he and his father played their first concert together at Madison Square Garden. The two later went on a joint tour of the United States and Australia. In the essay, he claimed that before his father’s jumps, Robbie Knievel would ride around on his back tire to entertain people with “wheelie performances.”
Mr. Knievel tried working in a sawmill, a bike shop and laying tile, but he always went back to motorcycle jumping.
He once claimed, “I suppose I was born” to be a motorbike stuntman, adding, “I do it for the excitement and the quick money.”
He had arguments with his father as a teenager and left home at the age of 19 to launch a single career. But Evel Knievel continued to have a significant impact on his life.
Mr. Knievel recounted that before one of his first significant jumps, over ten parked vans, he grew so scared that he got a fever, but he recalled his father’s words of wisdom: “It’s normal for you to be nervous. You’ll perform better the larger the audience.
Mr. Knievel, who was divorced, is survived by his three children, Maria Collins, Krysten Knievel-Hansson, and Karmen Knievel in addition to his brother.
The last few years of his father’s life, according to Mr. Knievel, were spent talking about “the crazy lives we’d had, and how lucky we’d been time and time again.”
According to Mr. Knievel, “my dad grappled with the thought of handing the baton to me.” He mistook me for one of the many people trying to outjump him when I was his biggest supporter. If you think this is interesting, please share it with your friends. For more updates and the latest news regarding celebrities, Visit Newswatchlist.com.
Leave a Reply