Early Sunday morning Robbie Knievel proved once again that he is the best motorcycle distance jumper since, well, since his famous father.
Following in his father's tire tracks, the 29-year-old Knievel broke his own world record by jumping 24 pickups and a pair of semi-trucks, 171 feet in all, before nearly 10,000 diehard fans at Bonneville Raceway Sunday about 1 a.m., nearly three hours after the jump was scheduled.Knievel is the son of Evel Knievel, who made several famous jumps in the 1970s, including an ill-fated attempt to ride a rocket-bike across the mile-wide Snake River Canyon Gorge in 1974.
The younger Knievel said the 171-foot jump wasn't as easy as it looked.
"It felt terrible," said Knievel, referring to the wind conditions. "The ramp looked shaky. I went as fast as the bike would take me."
Still, that didn't stop him from riding his modified 500-cc motorcycle down a runway at nearly 90 miles an hour before becoming airborne, to the delight of Knievel's new hometown fans. Knievel, a native of Butte, Mont., has lived in Murray since January.
The jump measured 18 inches further than his own 169-foot 9-inch world record set last year in Florida.
"It was unreal . . . utterly unbelievable," said Louis Eames, a track official who watched the jump from the scoring tower, barely 75 feet from the apex of Knievel's aerobatics. "Because of the wind, I think it was very heroic of him to make the jump."