Somewhat the worse for wear, Knievel had been boozing it up in a bar called Moose’s Place in Kalispell, Montana with his friend Chuck Shelton. Shelton spotted a calendar on the wall of the bar with a picture of the Grand Canyon on it and told Knievel he should try jumping that. Anyone other than Knievel would have laughed off the idea for the joke it was intended as, and, at least initially, that’s what Evel did. But gradually, through a haze of alcohol, the laughing stopped and Knievel began to realise he might just be on to something big. Very big. ‘The more I studied on it, and the more Montana Marys I put back, the narrower that durned [sic] hole in the ground seemed to get. People talk about the Generation Gap and the Missile Gap, but I suddenly saw that the real gap was right there in the heart of the Golden West. And I knew I could bridge the bastard.’ As an afterthought he added, ‘Ah well, what the hell? I always liked drinking and jumping.’
The Montana Marys Knievel was consuming on that particular evening have become as much part of his legend as his jumps, but the actual contents of Evel’s favourite drink have long been a source of speculation. Some claimed it was a near lethal combination of beer, tomato juice, Wild Turkey and vodka, while others suggested a touch of engine oil added to his beer was the magic ingredient. Like most things surrounding Knievel, the facts have been misinterpreted, distorted and exaggerated, and Evel was, more often than not, prepared to play along – or at least not deny any of his legend. However, he did finally put an end to the speculation surrounding the contents of a Montana Mary in 1998 when he disappointed many by confessing it was ‘…just beer and tomato juice [a drink favoured by Butte miners]. The stuff about Wild Turkey and vodka in it is just crap.’
Of course, even a daredevil wildly drunk on Montana Marys would realise that the massive, gaping chasm that was the Grand Canyon could never be jumped by any standard motorcycle. It was, after all, two miles wide at the spot Knievel was considering jumping and was as much as 5,700 feet deep in places. But that in itself was not enough to put Knievel off and he started making preliminary plans which would one day allow him to tackle the ultimate stunt. He initially conceptualised the building of a giant take-off ramp, 200 feet high and 740 feet long, which would allow him to tackle the canyon in the same way he tackled any other jump but on a much, much grander scale. He would have a custom bike built specially for the stunt, featuring a jet engine, wings and a parachute. Knievel even went as far as to claim he had made scientific calculations (for once) that would allow the bike to bridge the chasm. The bike was to be 13 feet long and weigh in at almost 1,000 kilos and, according to his calculations, it would reach a top speed of 250mph and would accelerate to 158mph in just 3.7 seconds. The total cost of building the ramp and bike he estimated at $1 million.
The whole idea seemed nothing short of ridiculous but, if nothing else, it gave Knievel something more to talk about and he announced these plans on national US television in late 1967, saying, ‘I’m going to try and jump across the Grand Canyon but I may have to parachute off the bike before reaching the other side. I know how to parachute and I can “track” with my body. If I bail off the bike, I’ll just aim my body toward the opposite rim of the canyon, open my parachute and land there.’ To those who scoffed at the idea and claimed Evel was just a publicity seeker, he added, ‘Before I even make the jump I may show these sceptics I mean business by riding a motorcycle across the Grand Canyon on a cable. I’ll be just like a tightrope walker in a circus, but I won’t have a safety net to catch me. That’d show those sceptics.’
In actual fact, the sceptics did have the last laugh as Knievel never did manage to jump the Grand Canyon, nor did he ride over it on a cable. Despite gaining preliminary permission from the Department of the Interior (who owned the land where Knievel proposed to take off from) to make the jump, this was later withdrawn when it was realised that Knievel was actually serious about the attempt. He had already announced a tentative jump date of 4 July 1968 but permission was withdrawn just a few months beforehand. For the time being, Knievel was grounded, at least as far as flying over the Grand Canyon went. But the seeds for jumping a canyon had been sewn; Knievel had promised his public he would see it through and the idea refused to go away. It would change shape and, eventually, location but it did not go away. One day, Knievel vowed, he would jump a canyon, some darned canyon, if only to prove the doubters wrong.
Unable to realise his ultimate dream for the time being, Knievel looked elsewhere for a means of breaking out of the rut that was jumping over cars. He finally found his location at the newly opened Caesar’s Palace casino and hotel resort, which was situated, somewhat appropriately, in the gambling capital of the world – Las Vegas. It was here, he decided, that he would take the gamble that would ultimately lead to worldwide fame and fortune or, equally likely, his own death.
Knievel was in Vegas for a middleweight title fight when he first clapped eyes on the spectacular fountains in front of Caesar’s grand entranceway. They gushed intermittently high up into the dry Vegas air and Evel realised straight away that they were perfectly suited to his needs: he vowed there and then to jump them. But even though he had built up a big-enough reputation to command national media coverage when he announced his jump, it wasn’t so easy gaining permission from the casino’s owners.
It is worth pointing out that Evel Knievel was a notorious yarn teller and it was often difficult to separate whole truths from half-truths, and half-truths from complete fantasy, when listening to his animated and entertaining speech. Over the course of almost 40 years he repeated and exaggerated the same tales to the point where he appeared to believe even the furthest-fetched stories himself. Knievel didn’t become the legend he is by telling modest, mundane anecdotes about himself; his larger-than-life character was very much part of the reason why he attained such fame, and his enthusiastic and often over-the-top story-telling went a long way to creating that character. Knievel himself may well have had the last laugh by telling tongue-in-cheek stories and fooling many into believing them. Indeed, it was once a running joke that in 20 minutes Knievel could tell enough yarns about his early life to keep a reporter busy for 20 years just checking them out. His famed rhetoric was exemplified in his explanation of how he gained permission to jump the Caesar’s fountains.
The day after the aforementioned Vegas title fight, Knievel called Caesar’s founder and executive director Jay Sarno, claiming to be a certain Frank Quinn from Life magazine. Knievel took up the story from both men’s points of view:
Knievel: Do you know Eval Neval?
Sarno: Eval Neval? Who the hell’s he?
Knievel: He’s the guy who’s gonna jump the Grand Canyon, says he’s gonna jump over your hotel.
Sarno: I heard about that nut, he ain’t gonna jump nothin’ around here. I gotta go, goodbye.
The following day, Knievel called Sarno again, this time posing as a reporter:
Knievel: Hi, this is Larson with Sports Illustrated. You ever heard of Evel Neevle?
Sarno: Evel Neevle? Who the hell’s this Evel Neevle?
Knievel: He’s the guy that’s going to jump the Grand…
Sarno: Oh yes, some guy called me yesterday about that guy. I don’t know, something around here…something’s going on. I don’t know. Call back.
Two days later, Knievel called again, this time impersonating a friend who worked for the ABC television network.
Knievel: This is Dennis Lewen from ABC’s Wide World of Sports. Do you know Evel Knievel?
Sarno: Eval Neval, Evel Neevle, Evel Knievel? Who is this crazy guy? Everybody’s calling me up about him. I think we’ve got a deal with him, I don’t know, call back.
With the ball rolling, Knievel then sent his fictitious business partners to work. Because he admired the Jewish community for their financial skills, Knievel had created three fictitious Jewish businessmen to head up his