Mike Attisano, author of Simplifying Las Vegas, available on Kindle and as a pdf at simplifyinglasvegas.com will handle this dangerous question.
In a city where you can carry your booze on the streets, women dance topless on stage, and high rollers flash more cash than many of us make in a year, daredevils have to go the extra mile to stand out. Here’s a recap of some of the most memorable moments.
Probably the most famous stunt performed in Las Vegas was Evel Knievel’s attempt to jump 150 feet over the fountains at Caesars Palace on December 31, 1967. He cleared the fountains, but fell a little shy of the target on the ramp. His head-over-handlebars crash was captured by his then-wife Linda, who was filming the event. The accident didn’t kill Evel, but he sustained numerous injuries and was in a coma for a month. Did it stop him from ever jumping over stuff in a motorcycle again? Nah. It actually propelled him to fame and he continued to jump into the early 1980s. He passed away in 2007, but will forever be remembered for his one and only attempt at Caesars Palace.
September 15, 1980: Different daredevil, same jump, similar results. Gary Wells tried his luck at Caesars, but missed the landing ramp completely and crashed into a concrete wall. He broke his back and both legs and suffered a ruptured aorta. Ouch. But he, too, survived, and was back on his bike in (can you believe this?) five months. He never attempted Caesars Palace again, though, and these days he guides off-road riders through tours of Sonora, Mexico.
Hoping to avenge his father’s ill-fated crash, 22-year old "Kaptain" Robbie Knievel revved up his bike on April 14, 1989, to attempt the Caesars Palace jump. The third time proved to be the charm for the first successful motorcycle jump over the fountains at Caesars. Robbie benefitted from a lighter bike, but it wasn’t just technology that helped him. The elder Knievel said that his son was a much better rider than he ever was. Robbie continues to jump today (see the Mirage Volcano jump below), but not over those fountains!
Irro Seppanen proved the sky’s the limit when he and two friends base-jumped from the Stratosphere. They hid their parachutes from security inside large stuffed animals sans the filling. After a trip to the restroom, they quickly emerged with their chutes on their backs, hopped over the fences, and jumped in broad daylight off the tower. All three landed successfully in a nearby parking lot and hurried into getaway cars. I don’t know if they asked for half their ticket price back for only using the elevator once.
Robbie Knievel just couldn’t stay away from Las Vegas. So he agreed to jump the Mirage Volcano on New Year’s Eve 2008. Sort of. You see, Fox promoted it that way, but there was some disagreement over moving some trees in the parking lot, and when the casino wouldn’t do it, Robbie couldn’t jump over the volcano. So he did the next best thing. He jumped next to it.
Robbie Knievel’s New Year’s Eve jump was pretty spectacular, but may have been trumped by an Australian with the same first name. Robbie Maddison’s stunt was unlike any other in Las Vegas. He didn’t jump over anything … he jumped on top of something, the Arc de Triomphe at Paris, to be precise. That’s right, Robbie jumped 120 feet in the air and landed on a very small patch of the Parisian replica. And, according to him, that was the easy part! The rest of the stunt involved physics; what goes up must come down. Robbie hit the landing ramp successfully, but hard and tore his hand (not badly). This was exactly one year after Robbie broke the Guinness World Record when he completed a 322-foot jump at the Rio.
You’ll flip over these next two stunts. On New Year’s Eve 2008 (what
