Was Evel Knievel really any good….

Or was he just mental and crashed a lot? (Obviously this has come about as a result of the toddler bikes on main page).
I definitely remember him being a total idol as a kid and even having a pull back and let go motor bike toy for which i would set up many deaf defying trick in the hall way.
But really did he just crash a lot?

epic fool

game lad though

Thats exactly what i thought.
Promoter.” come on son – you can do this”
Knievel ” Ok boss, i wont let me fans down. Please get plenty of bandages and soup ready”

wasn’t there a lady who did just as dangerous jumps as him (was on the evel documentery/that hammond top gear geezer) had never heard of her until the doc (she should be just as recognized as evel)

I would say he was of the same genepool as josh bender

Game for a laugh, unfortunately not bright enough to see what he was doing was slightly dangerous for. He stood out as others were simply not stupid enough to do what he did on the bikes of the day

He was a showman. No idea if their was anyone else better at the time. If their was they weren’t a good enough showman to get noticed.

Barry Sheene was another. He may not have been the best but he knew how to be famous.

admittedly he was jumping for distance as opposed to air time, but I can’t but notice that the angles of take off and landing are vastly different to the ramps that the MX freestylers use. Based on what we know now, would these jumps be more likely?

No where near enough high-vis in Harry_the_Spiders clip.

Some things don’t need explanation, Evel Knievel comes into that bracket……and it mean as kids we got someone to look up to when taking our Raleigh Strikers of some sweet jumps.

And we got these at christmas:

Do Metal Mulisha do a line of these?

That was the badger. One of my favorite ever toys up there alongside Raleigh burner and millennium falcon.

Snake river jump in a rocket. Difficult to see how there’s room for his enormous baws in there.

He wasn’t in the same league as Travis Pastrana ect

I was just about to compare him to Josh Bender but someone else beat me to it.

If he died with plenty of cash left in the bank then he was hardly a failure IMHO.

He wasn’t the nicest of guys either

best back flip evvaaaaaar!!

you cant really compare evel to travis pastrana, for one thing, the equipment available to evel was absolute CRAP compared to even a half decent modern mx bike.
for another, H&S would never allow pastrana to attempt some of the things evel did.
this is not an attempt to ‘diss’ pastrana in any way.
it would, im sure, be interesting to see pastrana on evel’s harley,
and evel, on a modern bike.

Have you the mental stuff he does? It’s the motorsport equivalent of jackass

He deserves hero status simply for his choice of bike.
Even back then, there were plenty of light, high powered motocross bikes around with long travel suspension.
An XR750 wouldn’t be my first choice for a jump bike.

IIRC Harley paid him to use their bikes

your only ever as good as your last jump!

Right place at the right time. Same as Bruce Lee and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Evel was an old-fashioned hero. He was famous for actually trying and sometimes doing stuff.

That he often failed just made his successes that much more appreciated.

And as said, he did it on a bloody Harley not a MX bike. Big balls.

Absolute nutter.

you cant really compare evel to travis pastrana,

Travis might be as mental but he has way, way more talent.

a True Daredevil!

Wife beater – check

Average motorbiker – check

Made a heap of dosh doing crazy stuff – check

I admire him for the latter.

you forgot alcoholic drug abuser!

I had one of those whizzy motorbike toys. It was crap.

The Travis comparisons are pointless, like comparing Muse or someone to Led Zep and saying Muse play their instruments better. It doesn’t matter, one is a legendary icon of 20th century popular culture, the other is just a face in the crowd relatively speaking.

And so the Knievel myth crumbles.

Well if you need a new hero, how about Eddie Kidd? Britain’s very own stunt jumper world record holder from the 80s. Ended up paralysed after a crash in the 90s. This year he entered the London Marathon to raise money for a children’s charity. One month in he has just passed the 16 mile mark.

As a show man and self promoter the man had few rivals.

As a successful motorcycle jumper he was hopeless, used a Harley Davidson for gods sake. His potective clothing was ….. well lets face it a leather suit and a cape was never going to cut it.

Brave or just plain insane is open to debate.

I reckon Evel Knievel was more a Daredevil.

Bud Ekins was a stuntman and excellent rider, as was his mate Steve McQueen.

As TJ say he was paid to ride an overweight underpowered Harley instead of the better lighter faster European bikes.

Knievel was good at crashing though

Yeah, imagine doing that stuff on a harley, i mean really a frigging harley!!

Well if you need a new hero, how about Eddie Kidd? Britain’s very own stunt jumper world record holder from the 80s. Ended up paralysed after a crash in the 90s. This year he entered the London Marathon to raise money for a children’s charity. One month in he has just passed the 16 mile mark.

+1

Saw a report on tv the other week, Eddie doing his marathon.

Very humbling.

He was a dickhead.

He chose the most pointless bikes (American) to do crazy things. He crashed an enormous amount because he didn’t plan things properly, didn’t employ professionals to work stuff out for him, didn’t take the right precautions and basically just winged pretty much everything he did.

And had balls the size of melons. He TOTALLY works for me. He was shit but he was ace. 90% of the stuff he did was doomed for failure before it even started, which didn’t matter. He broke stuff all the time, rockin!

To quote from the man himself…. “better a has-been than a never-been…”. Guess it applies to the current crop of Idol “stars” (“never-shoul-have-beens” :-))

Where does courage start and stupidity end?

Fab bit of poetry about Evel: