Question of the Day - 15 December 2017

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. As requested, here’s a recap of some of the most memorable moments.

Probably the most famous stunt performed in Las Vegas was, indeed, Evel Knievel’s attempt to make a motorcycle 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 on a motorcycle again? Nope. 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. Ooph! But he, too, survived and was back on his bike in five months. He never attempted Caesars Palace again, though. 

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. 

Irro Seppanen, a Finnish producer, director, and author, proved the sky’s the limit when he and two friends base-jumped from the Stratosphere in 2008. They hid their parachutes from security inside large stuffed animals, minus 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. 

There were three stunts on New Year’s Eve 2008. One was Robbie Knievel jumping over the Mirage volcano. Leading up to the jump, so many things went wrong that the ramps were finished mere minutes before Robbie was scheduled to do the jump -- all on live TV. Nothing had been tested. Robbie hadn't even eyed the ramps. But he went for it and jumped over three of the four fireballs; he went right through the fourth! The TV producer said, “What a shot! We had him in a tight close-up going into the flames, then cut away to show him coming right out. It looked like he was escaping from hell. That was the absolute money shot of all time." Robbie landed safely and rang in the new year with Kid Rock at the Palms. 

The second was Aussie Robbie Maddison's jump at Paris. This one was unlike any other in Las Vegas. He didn’t jump over anything … he jumped up on top of the Arc de Triomphe. Taking off from a long ramp on his Yamaha 250, he and his bike rose 96 feet and landed atop the Arc. That was the easy part! The rest of the stunt involved physics; what goes up must come down. He launched his bike from the rooftop and hit the ramp successfully, but hard, tearing his hand (not badly).

That stunt took place exactly one year after Robbie Maddison broke the Guinness World Record for motorcycle distance jumping when he caught air that was the equivalent of the length of a football field (322 feet, to be exact), at a course that was set up at the Rio, on New Year's Eve 2007.

The third on NYE 2008 was New Zealand stunt driver Rhys Millen's attempt to backflip a customized pickup truck, also at the Rio. As he approached and launched off the curved ramp, his speed and rotation were perfect, but after a slightly off-balance landing, the truck rolled down the landing hill, winding up on the drivers side, whereby Millen had to be extricated. It would've been the world's first successful backflip in a four-wheeled vehicle. 

Most of these jumps can be seen on YouTube.