ROBBIE KNIEVEL, son of legendary daredevil Evel Knievel, plans to make a big motorcycle jump in Salt Lake City on Saturday. We caught up with him in his shop on Monday. Is this guy a chip off the old block or what? . . .
Hey, you think it's easy following in my old man's footsteps? Jumping over buses and cars on a motorcycle is not easy. I make it look easy, but it's not. It's dangerous, too, but I do it. I'm carrying on the name Knievel as long as I can. I'm 29 now, and I've got about 3,000 jumps under my belt. I figure I've got 6 or 7 years more to do this.I've been performing since I was a boy, but it's not exactly routine. I'm on edge this week. On Saturday I'm going to jump 24 Ford trucks at Bonneville Raceway here in my new hometown of Salt Lake City. I'll hit a nine-foot ramp going 90 miles per hour and fly 170 feet. I hope. I'm cutting it real close. When I jumped 30 cars - 169 feet, 9 inches - in Florida last year, my rear wheel hit the edge of the ramp.
There's always an element of fear. I never lose that. I think about coming up short and getting decapitated by that ramp. But this is what I do. Last week I jumped Montana's largest gambling casino and a tall cottonwood tree - 140 feet in all. Later this month I'll jump 20 Cadillacs in Philadelphia.
Did I ever have a choice? I am every bit my father's son. Like my father, I did some jail time when I was growing up in Butte, Mont. I tried to steal some drums from a music store. I wanted to be a drummer. I did some other crazy things, such as the time I ran my motorcycle into a bridge pillar. Anyway, I dropped out of school and left home at 16. I worked some odd jobs. Worked in a saw mill. Laid tile. Tested go carts. Worked at a bike shop.
I was always touring with my dad. My older brother Kelly gave it up after only a few shows, but not me. It got in my blood. When I was eight, I did my first show with my father at Madison Square Garden. I jumped his ramps at nine. I jumped five vans at age 13 on a bike twice my size. When I was 11, I did a wheelie across a football field live on ABC in front of a cheering crowd. Maybe that's what did it. I had my own toy by then. A toy company made a Robbie Knievel doll.
I learned from my father. By the time he quit I was ready to jump on my own. We argued all the time. He wouldn't let me jump over more than 10 vehicles when I was 17. I finally had to break away from him so I could get better.
There will never be another Evel Knievel. He was the original. To jump as far as he did with the equipment he had was incredible. I started a lot younger than he did, and I'm better than he was. He said I was better than he was when I was 15. I'm jumping a lot farther than he did. The farthest he went was 120 feet. I'm trying to do all the jumps he missed. I jumped the 13 buses he missed in London; I did it in the L.A. Coliseum with no hands. And the 11 cars he missed in the Cow Palace. I jumped 13 cars going down a ski ramp with no hands. And the fountains in Caesar's Palace. My dad missed that one too and wound up in the hospital for a month. I cleared it two years ago, and got a quarter-million dollars.
I don't just want to do what my dad did, I want to top him, I want to be better. I want to try the Snake River Canyon jump again, and then I want to do the Grand Canyon. I hope to do the Snake River on Sept. 8 - the same day my father tried it - in 1994. It's a 1,600-foot gorge. I'm not really looking forward to it, but my job is dangerous, and promotion is the way it works. I have to do it. If I do, I'll get all kinds of deals. I'd ride the same sky cycle my father did, only with modifications. It's steam powered and puts out 5,000 pounds of thrust. It goes from zero to 400 in 31/2 seconds straight up.
People always ask about my dad, of course. He's 52 now and one leg's 11/2 inches shorter than the other because the crash at Caesar's shoved the bone through the hip socket. He's got arthritis and his joints ache when it's cold, so he goes to Arizona in the winter. He broke 30 or 40 bones during his career. I remember helping him to inject Xylocaine into his hands to numb the pain before a jump. The doctor wouldn't do it.
I'm collecting my own injuries. I've had six broken bones, two knee surgeries, torn ligaments, a torn lung and a broken knee cap. That's not bad compared to my Dad.
I haven't worked with my dad much in the past couple of years. I had to get away from him. He just won't step aside. All those years I was his biggest fan, and now it's like, Dad, be my fan. He drives me crazy. He won't move over.
A lot of guys are challenging me to jump-offs. I'm just waiting to hear what they'll pay me. They're trying to establish a name, and they need me. They think all they have to do is go out and jump, but there's so much more to it. It took years for me to get to this point.
Jumping itself takes a lot of skill. You've got to reach the right speed to make the jump. I don't use a speedometer - I can't be looking at it and the ramp anyway. I've got the feel of the gears. I know what distance they'll get. Then you've got to come off the ramp just right, and the back wheel is spinning and trying to pull the front wheel up. You have to control the bike, and you have to hit your target. Any kind of wind can throw you off. When you hit, you've got to land with the back wheel down first. It can be tricky.
My mom has been telling me to get a regular job for a long time. I say, Mom, this is a regular job.