New Year's Eve, 1967. Most people in Las Vegas were busy nursing cocktails or eyeing the slot machines, but a 29-year-old guy from Butte, Montana, named Robert Craig Knievel—the world would soon know him only as Evel—was staring down 141 feet of water. He wasn't there to swim. He was there to fly.
The Evel Knievel Caesars Palace jump is, without a single doubt, the most famous failure in the history of sports entertainment. It didn't make him a star because he landed it. It made him an icon because he didn't.
Honestly, the whole thing was a con from the start. Evel wasn't a household name yet. To get the gig, he literally called Jay Sarno, the founder of Caesars Palace, posing as different journalists and fake "business reps" to drum up hype for himself. He created a phantom demand for a jump that nobody had actually asked for. Sarno, a man who loved a good spectacle, bit.
The Set-Up: Pure 1960s Chaos
There were no computers. No digital simulations. No physics teams with clipboards measuring wind resistance. Evel basically just looked at the fountains and decided he could clear them.
He used a Triumph Bonneville T120 for the attempt. If you look at that bike today, it looks like a museum piece, not something you’d launch over a massive fountain complex. It was heavy, the suspension was basically nonexistent by modern standards, and the power-to-weight ratio was... well, let's just say "optimistic."
The crowd was massive. Roughly 10,000 people packed the area in front of the hotel. You’ve probably seen the footage—it was filmed by John Derek and Linda Evans (yes, that Linda Evans). Evel paid for the filming himself because he knew that even if he died, the footage would be worth something.
✨ Don't miss: Why October London Make Me Wanna Is the Soul Revival We Actually Needed
He took a shot of Wild Turkey before the jump. That’s not a legend; it’s just how he operated.
The Flight and the Nightmare Landing
When he hit the takeoff ramp at roughly 90 mph, he actually looked great. For about two seconds, he was a god. He cleared the fountains. The horizontal distance of 141 feet was a record at the time, and he technically made it across the water.
Then came the "crunch."
The rear wheel clipped the edge of the landing ramp. It wasn't a clean hit. The bike didn't just land hard; it bucked him. Knievel was thrown over the handlebars like a ragdoll at nearly 100 mph.
If you watch the slow-motion video, it’s genuinely hard to stomach. His body hits the pavement, bounces, and then slides and tumbles for what feels like an eternity. He looks less like a human and more like a bag of laundry being kicked down a hallway. He eventually slammed into the brick wall of a nearby building (the Dunes hotel parking lot area).
🔗 Read more: How to Watch The Wolf and the Lion Without Getting Lost in the Wild
The Damage Report
The list of injuries from the Evel Knievel Caesars Palace disaster reads like a medical textbook's chapter on trauma:
- A crushed pelvis (the most severe injury)
- Fractured femur
- Fractured wrist
- Fractured both ankles
- Severe concussion
He ended up in a coma. Most reports say it was 29 days. Some historians think that number was slightly inflated for the "legend," but the reality was that he was in a very bad way. Doctors thought he might never walk again. They were wrong.
Why This Jump Specifically?
You’ve got to wonder why this particular failure is the one we still talk about. He had successful jumps. He jumped 14 Greyhound buses later in his career and landed that one perfectly.
But Caesars was different. It was the birth of the "super-daredevil." ABC's Wide World of Sports eventually aired the footage, and it became their highest-rated segment ever. People were mesmerized by the violence of the crash. It tapped into something primal.
It also set the template for his "White Cape" persona. Before Caesars, he was a guy in leathers. After Caesars, he was a superhero. He realized that the American public didn't just want to see him succeed; they wanted to see him cheat death. And to cheat death, you have to get remarkably close to it.
💡 You might also like: Is Lincoln Lawyer Coming Back? Mickey Haller's Next Move Explained
The Legend vs. The Reality
Some people say Evel was a bad motorcycle rider. That’s a common critique from modern motocross fans. "He didn't even have a back-end landing technique," they say.
But you have to remember the context. He was jumping a street bike. These weren't long-travel suspension dirt bikes. If he’d used a modern KTM or Honda, he probably would have landed it and been forgotten by February. The danger was the point. The technical "badness" of his setup was exactly what made the feat so insane.
Practical Takeaways for the Modern Fan
If you're looking to dive deeper into the history of the Evel Knievel Caesars Palace event, here is what you should actually do:
- Watch the Raw Footage: Don't watch the edited documentaries first. Find the raw John Derek footage on YouTube. Pay attention to the sound—the roar of the Triumph and the sudden, sickening silence of the crowd.
- Visit the Site: If you're in Las Vegas, go to the front of Caesars Palace. The fountains are still there. Stand where the landing ramp would have been. When you see the actual distance in person, it feels even more impossible than it looks on TV.
- Check the "Evel Live" Recreations: In 2018, Travis Pastrana recreated the jump using a modern Indian Scout FTR750. He landed it. Seeing a modern professional do it with modern tech gives you a huge amount of respect for what Evel was trying to do with essentially a "standard" bike from the sixties.
Evel Knievel didn't just jump a fountain that day. He jumped into the permanent consciousness of American culture. He proved that sometimes, how you fall is more important than how you stand.
To truly understand the legacy, your next step should be to look up the 1974 Snake River Canyon attempt. It's the logical conclusion to the madness that started at Caesars—a move from motorcycles to actual steam-powered rockets. It's where the showmanship finally met its absolute limit.