Life of Evel: Evel Knievel - Stuart Barker

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the Spokane branch. Later, when Triber decided to add another franchise in Moses Lake, also in Washington State, he trusted Knievel enough to allow him to run the business. When Triber eventually wanted out of the motorcycle business entirely he sold the Moses Lake branch to Knievel, who was obviously determined to have another stab at being a successful businessman.

      Bobby knew from his previous experience that the challenge of running a successful bike dealership was in learning how to attract potential customers to his particular store rather than anyone else’s, and, once he’d got them there, how to persuade them to part with their money to buy a motorcycle. At first, Knievel thought small: he offered a $100 discount off the price of any Honda to anyone who could beat him at arm wrestling. (According to Knievel, no one ever did qualify for the discount.)

      But such wacky fairground gimmicks were never going to be enough to attract serious business, and as sales continued to be sluggish Knievel started thinking bigger. Having become more and more adept at the art of riding a motorcycle and, more importantly, at performing stunts and tricks on a bike through his racing, Knievel got round to thinking back to his childhood and the Joey Chitwood Auto Daredevil Show. It might now have been nineteen years ago, but childhood memories, especially such exciting ones, are forged strongly within the psyche and Knievel had never forgotten the experience. But only now, in 1965, did he see a way to turn what was just a happy memory into a potential money-spinner, or at the very least, a way to attract more customers through his shop doors. Robert Craig Knievel, at the age of 26, decided he was going to jump a motorcycle off a ramp over some obstacles in front of a live audience. A star, and a whole new medium of entertainment, was about to be born.

      Not content with an ‘ordinary’ ramp-to-ramp jump (which was anything but ordinary at the time), Knievel decided upon adding more danger and more novelty to the event. His elk protest from 1961 had taught him the value of original thinking when it came to drumming up publicity and this time around he excelled himself. In future years the world would know Knievel as the man who soared over cars, trucks and buses on a motorcycle, but his first ever jump was one of the most unusual of his entire career: Bobby had made up his mind to leap over two mountain lions and a crate containing 100 live rattlesnakes.

      Once more displaying a keen eye for promotional opportunities, Knievel chose a 350cc Honda from his dealership to make the jump on. Honda, now the world’s largest manufacturer of motorcycles, was a relative newcomer in 1965, and many people still mocked the little bikes from the land of the rising sun, associating them with cheaper, unreliable produce manufactured in the Far East. American riders in particular referred to Hondas as ‘rice burners’ and preferred their machines to be of wholesome American or British stock. But if Knievel could prove that a little Honda was good enough to jump 40 feet over a cage of rattlers then just maybe he could convince them to buy one from his store.

      The obvious choice for the jump site was at the Moses Lake Raceway, not far from Knievel’s bike shop, and it was arranged that he would perform his madcap stunt during the halftime break in race proceedings. Knievel says he never formally practised the 40-foot leap but it seems safe to assume he had attempted some sort of jumps prior to his public debut, even if they were on a much smaller scale. On the other hand, given that he never made a habit of practising for any of his later bigger jumps (‘No use practising – if you kill yourself in practice you’ll never make the jump for real’), it is possible that he was prepared to just twist the throttle and see what happened. He was, after all, well versed in the merits of positive thinking and was more than happy to take a risk if he thought there was money to be made.

      Obtaining the lions and snakes was in itself quite an achievement, and it would be hard to imagine such a performance being permitted today in our animal-friendly society. However, Bobby used his connections well and arranged to ‘borrow’ the hapless creatures from the zoo in Cooley City. The zoo’s manager was dating a girl Knievel knew well and he used all his charm in persuading her to fight his case. ‘She used to come into the store and sit around all the time and go to lunch with me and this and that and the other thing, so she talked him into doing it.’

      Even so, the owner of the mountain lions was still understandably nervous about subjecting his animals to the potential harm that could be caused them by a lunatic on a motorcycle. ‘The guy that owned the mountain lions was afraid I was going to kill them so he put both of them close to the take-off ramp,’ Knievel explained. No one seemed to care much for the well-being of the rattlesnakes, however, the general consensus probably being that if there were to be a hundred less poisonous critters slithering around Washington State then so much the better.

      With the snakes and lions in place and blissfully unaware of what was about to happen next, Knievel rode out in front of the crowd on his little Honda to prepare for his first ever professional appearance as a motorcycle jumper. There was little of the glitz and glamour which was associated with his later appearances; no sparkling red, white and blue jumpsuit, no spectacularly custom-painted Harley-Davidson and no entourage of helpers and hangers-on. But the showmanship was there from the very beginning as Knievel revved his bike and made several runs past the take-off ramp, an action which both excited the crowd and allowed Knievel to assess the speed he would need to be travelling at to safely make the jump. This was a technique Knievel would use throughout his career to great effect.

      When he felt he had whipped his audience into a suitable frenzy, Knievel rode slowly back to his starting position and prepared to face the unknown. What he was about to attempt was no illusion, nor was there any trickery involved. If he didn’t carry enough speed he was going to be seriously hurt right there in front of a live audience, and if he couldn’t hold on to the bike as it smashed back down to earth he could even be killed. Like taking an aeroplane on its first test flight, there was no safe way to practise what Knievel was about to attempt, and that is precisely what drew the crowd’s attention.

      Racing cars or motorcycles is a matter of progressively gaining speed through experience. Jumping a motorcycle is do or die, Russian roulette on two wheels. Knievel would twist his throttle, launch himself off a flimsy wooden ramp and put his fate in the hands of the gods. He was little more than a human cannonball and the crowd knew it.

      But by his own admission, the young Knievel had ‘balls like a rhinoceros’ and a whole heap of faith in himself. He wasn’t about to back out, even if his nerves were on edge; on the contrary, the feeling of raw fear and excitement was just like the feeling he got when robbing a bank, but this time the source of his excitement was legal and it felt good. Better than the gloomy prospect of being lowered into a mineshaft, better than the drudgery of doing the rounds as an insurance salesman and better than being told what to do in the Army. Knievel was finally alone and calling the shots; he would quite literally stand or fall by his own decisions and his own skills. He felt more alive than at any other time in his life. It was time to go.

      Knievel twisted the throttle on his Honda and kicked his way up through the gearbox, gaining crucial speed before shooting up the ramp that would launch him into the void. As he left the end of the ramp, the Honda’s revs dropped away as the rear wheel continued to spin, seeking a purchase on anything solid. Knievel tried to hold the handlebars up high, sensing he must bring the motorcycle down rear wheel first for a stable landing. He was now little more than a passenger; while he could control the angle the bike would descend at, he could no longer increase or decrease his speed, and it looked, even to his inexperienced eyes, that he was not going to clear the gap. He needed just a few more miles per hour to bridge the last few feet clearly. With a resounding ‘thud’ the Honda smashed back down to earth amid the noise of splintering wood. Knievel had in fact come down short and smashed open the far end of the wooden box containing the rattlesnakes. But he had made it. He had landed his bike safely and was still in one piece.

      The crowd, having never seen anything like it in their lives, yelled and cheered their approval. They had looked at the 40-foot gap and thought Knievel would never make it, but he had. And as he hauled on the brakes and scrubbed off speed, the crowd started to notice that the rattlesnakes were making a break for freedom – right in the crowd’s direction. ‘This guy started running around trying to catch them,’ laughed Knievel, ‘and I rode back by those mountain lions because I was so excited I didn’t know what I was doing. There wasn’t any grandstands and these snakes started crawling

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