Evel Knieval is dead at 69. His granddaughter says he’s been ailing for some time:
Knievel’s death was confirmed by his granddaughter, Krysten Knievel. He had been in failing health for years, suffering from diabetes and pulmonary fibrosis, an incurable condition that scarred his lungs.
Knievel 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.
Immortalized in the Washington’s Smithsonian Institution as “America’s Legendary Daredevil,” Knievel was best known for a failed 1974 attempt to jump Snake River Canyon on a rocket-powered cycle and a spectacular crash at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. He suffered nearly 40 broken bones before he retired in 1980.
When I was in grade school all those years ago, all the kids in my neighborhood were suffering from road rash and broken bones, the result of riding their bikes over makeshift ramps and missing their target. Mothers hated Evel Knieval but kids so wanted to be him.
