It wasn’t a jump over a fountain, or line of school buses, or in a rocket off a cliff that finally did in the World’s Greatest Daredevil. It was a pretty ordinary death by Evel’s standards.
Knievel had been in failing health for years, suffering from diabetes and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, an incurable condition that scarred his lungs. He had undergone a liver transplant in 1999 after nearly dying of hepatitis C, likely contracted through a blood transfusion after one of his bone-shattering spills.
His website reported his death today. He was 69.
Every boomer on a Spider Bike was Evel Knievel at one point or another. He wasn’t a boomer, but he sure appealed to us guys of boomer age.
What a showman, what a blowhard, what a ragdoll when he crashed.
He made his living and his reputation by failing. But he failed in spectacular fashion.
UPDATE: Blog of Hilarity has it right.
When I’d die, I’d die TO THE EXTREME! And I’d give all the credit to our friends at Mountain Dew. Dew or Die. That’s the kind of amazing product placement I give here…contact me advertisers, I have no scruples!
But Evel was born in Butte…and that explains much of his story.