Robbie Knievel, the second-generation motorcyclist and daredevil who jumped the fountains of Caesars Palace and the Grand Canyon in 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 cancer, his brother, Kelly Knievel, told The Hollywood Reporter.
“Daredevils don’t lead an easy life,” he said. “Every time they finish a jump, they have to come up with another one. They are entertainers, after all.”
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Twenty-two years after his father crashed spectacularly in a stunt at the newly opened Caesars Palace on New Year’s Eve, Knievel successfully cleared the hotel fountains in Las Vegas in April 1989 and exclaimed, “That was for you, Dad.”
In 1999, he and his motorcycle soared a personal record of 228 feet over the Grand Canyon, but he broke his leg on the landing. His father had tried to make it over the Snake River Canyon in Idaho in 1974 in a rocket-propelled vehicle on closed-circuit television, but his parachute deployed early, making for a dismal failure.
On television, Robbie Knievel also jumped 231 feet of limousines (30 of them) in 1998, between two 13-story towers in Las Vegas in 1999 and over five military airplanes on the deck of the USS Intrepid in New York in 2004.
Over the years, he jumped hundreds of times, above and beyond military vehicles, Hummers, trucks, barges, buses and Batmobiles and alongside a hotel volcano.
Born to Evel and Linda, a former cheerleader, on May 7, 1962, in Butte, Montana, Robert Edward Knievel II began riding motorcycles at age 7, performed his first show with his dad at Madison Square Garden at 8 and started touring with his father at 12. He dropped out of Central Catholic High School in Butte to further his career.
Billed as “Kaptain Robbie Knievel,” his final stunt came in 2011 when he cleared a series of tractor-trailers at a casino in Coachella.
He also starred in the 2005 A&E reality show Knievel’s Wild Ride, appeared on CHiPs and Hawaii Five-O and was the subject of a 2017 documentary, Chasing Evel: The Robbie Knievel Story.
In addition to his brother and mother, survivors include his sisters, Tracey and Alicia; daughters Maria, Krysten and Karmen; and five grandchildren.
Evel Knievel survived all his spills but succumbed to pulmonary disease in November 2007 at age 69. He was played in movies and TV shows by the likes of George Hamilton and Sam Elliott.
