Evel Knievel's son starred in TV specials, leaping over lodge fountains, the Grand Canyon and army airplanes.
Robbie Knievel, the second-generation motorcyclist and daredevil who jumped the fountains of Caesars Palace and the Grand Canyon within the high-flying bootstraps of his father, Evel Knievel, has died. He was 60.
Knievel died Friday in Reno, Nevada, after a battle with pancreatic most cancers, his brother, Kelly Knievel, advised The Hollywood Reporter.
“Daredevils don’t lead a straightforward life,” he mentioned. “Each time they end a soar, they should provide you with one other one. They're entertainers, in any case.”
Twenty-two years after his father crashed spectacularly in a stunt on the newly opened Caesars Palace on New 12 months’s Eve, Knievel efficiently cleared the lodge fountains in Las Vegas in April 1989 and exclaimed, “That was for you, Dad.”
In 1999, he and his motorbike soared a private file of 228 ft over the Grand Canyon, however he broke his leg on the touchdown. His father had tried to make it over the Snake River Canyon in Idaho in 1974 in a rocket-propelled car on closed-circuit tv, however his parachute deployed early, making for a dismal failure.
On tv, Robbie Knievel additionally jumped 231 ft of limousines (30 of them) in 1998, between two 13-story towers in Las Vegas in 1999 and over 5 army airplanes on the deck of the USS Intrepid in New York in 2004.
Over time, he jumped tons of of instances, above and past army autos, Hummers, vehicles, barges, buses and Batmobiles and alongside a lodge volcano.
Born to Evel and Linda, a former cheerleader, on Might 7, 1962, in Butte, Montana, Robert Edward Knievel II started driving bikes at age 7, carried out his first present together with his dad at Madison Sq. Backyard at 8 and began touring together with his father at 12. He dropped out of Central Catholic Excessive College in Butte to additional his profession.
Billed as “Kaptain Robbie Knievel,” his last stunt got here in 2011 when he cleared a sequence of tractor-trailers at a on line casino in Coachella.
He additionally starred within the 2005 A&E actuality present Knievel’s Wild Trip, appeared on CHiPs and Hawaii 5-O and was the topic of a 2017 documentary, Chasing Evel: The Robbie Knievel Story.
Along with his brother and mom, survivors embrace his sisters, Tracey and Alicia; daughters Maria, Krysten and Karmen; and 5 grandchildren.
Evel Knievel survived all his spills however succumbed to pulmonary illness in November 2007 at age 69. He was performed in motion pictures and TV exhibits by the likes of George Hamilton and Sam Elliott.