EVEL Knievel, the motorcycle daredevil whose jumps over buses, live sharks and Idaho's Snake River Canyon made him an international icon in the 1970s died yesterday aged 69.
Knievel's death was confirmed by his grand-daughter, 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, probably contracted through a blood transfusion after one of his bone-shattering spills.
Knievel, whose trademark was his red, white and blue spangled jumpsuit, suffered nearly 40 fractures before retiring in 1980.
Among his notable feats was a failed but spectacular attempt to leap the Snake River Canyon on a rocket-powered motorcycle in 1974, sailing over 13 Mack trucks in 1974 and jumping 13 double-decker buses in London in 1975.
Billy Rundel, a longtime friend and promoter, said Knievel had trouble breathing at his Florida condominium and died before an ambulance could get him to a hospital.
"It's been coming for years, but you just don't expect it. Superman just doesn't die, right?" Mr Rundel said.
Knievel's death came just two days after it was announced he and rapper Kanye West had settled a lawsuit over the use of Knievel's trademarked image in a popular West music video.
In an interview in May last year, Knievel said: "No king or prince has lived a better life. You're looking at a guy who's really done it all. There are things I wish I had done better, not only for me but for the ones I loved."
Immortalised in Washington's Smithsonian Institution as "America's Legendary Daredevil," Knievel was best known for the Snake River Canyon jump and a spectacular crash at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas.
"They started out watching me bust my ass, and I became part of their lives," Knievel once said. "People wanted to associate with a winner, not a loser. They wanted to associate with someone who kept trying to be a winner."
Born Robert Craig Knievel in the copper mining town of Butte on 17 October, 1938, Knievel worked in the Montana copper mines and served in the army. He claimed to have also been a swindler, a card thief, a safe cracker and a hold-up man.
He began his daredevil career in 1965, forming a troupe called Evel Knievel's Motorcycle Daredevils, performing stunts such as riding through fire walls and jumping over live rattlesnakes and mountain lions.
In 1966, he began touring alone, increasing the length of jumps until, on New Year's Day 1968, he was nearly killed when he jumped 151ft across the fountains in front of Caesar's Palace.
Knievel retired after a stunt in which he was again seriously injured, attempting to jump a tank full of live sharks in the Chicago Amphitheater.
He continued with smaller exhibitions with his son, Robbie.
Knievel married Linda Joan Bork in 1959 but they separated in the early 1990s. They had four children.
He lived with longtime partner, Krystal Kennedy-Knievel. Married in 1999, they divorced, but remained together.
