Tuesday, Feb. 24, 1998 | 9:54 a.m.
It's come down to a battle against Mother Nature, but Robbie Knievel isn't flinching.
Despite forecasters' predictions for 25 mph-plus winds and thunderstorms this evening, the "Kaptain" is confident he can clear 30 limousines parked side-by-side in the Tropicana hotel-casino's parking lot tonight and walk away a world record holder for the longest distance ever jumped on a motorcycle.
"I don't have a death wish," said Knievel, son of the world's most celebrated daredevil, Evel Knievel. "But I'm also a professional. This is what I get paid to do."
More than 10,000 people are expected to pack the back lot for the nationally televised event that begins at 5 p.m. Tickets are selling for $5, $15, and $25.
Live footage from the jump will be the main feature of FOX-TV's two-hour special, "Daredevils Live: Shattering the Records," which airs tonight. East Coast viewers will see the jump live; locally, it will air from 8-10 p.m.
The show will also include Brian "Crash" Carson's attempt to launch his nitro-powered car from one end of a Las Vegas football field and land it through the goal post at the opposite end, and "Spanky" Spangler's stunt Sunday outside The Orleans hotel-casino during which he spun his car three and a half times in a mid-air suicide spiral after leaving an angled launch ramp at 90 mph.
The Kaptain will be leaping over a 200-foot gap, and anticipates to land midway down an angled 100-foot ramp which he increased in width from eight to 16 feet as a precaution.
If he makes it, Knievel will clear 230 feet -- a jump he'd planned to head into at about 100 mph. That was before El Nino came to town, with its gusting winds and predicted torrential downpours.
Knievel arrived in the Las Vegas sunshine two weeks ago to practice, setting up his ramps for the jump south to north -- a critical element element to success, considering today's forecast is calling for increasing southwest to west winds.
Team Knievel members anticipate he'll cut back his speed.
"And pray," Knievel said Monday afternoon as a wicked wind whipped the American flags mounted on the landing ramp's safety deck. "The wind should be coming from my back, but it's unpredictable. I think I can jump in light rain. I'm not about to take a risk in front of the kids and kill myself."
Knievel's daughters, Krysten, 11, and Karmen, 18, are flying in from their homes in Chicago and Montana to watch dad, along with their legendary grandfather who decades ago opened the door for the fame and fortune so many motorcycle stuntmen have since come to claim.
Evel Knievel made it to his son's press conference at the Trop Monday, stepping out of a white limousine to the aid of a metal walker that currently supports his reconstructed pelvis crushed Dec. 31, 1967, at the Caesars Palace fountains.
The road to celebrity has left the legend with a hip made of titanium and one leg surgically lengthened by two inches.
"I can't really tell him what to do," the older stuntman said, regarding pointers he attempted to give his 35-year-old son during a practice session Saturday. "I hope he won't jump if it rains."
Wind remained the Knievels' biggest concern.
"For the jump to work, it's best for the wind to be coming straight into you," Evel Knievel said, likening tonight's stunt to the challenge ski jumpers face factoring in the ramp angle, speed, wind and landing technique.
Such a combination proved deadly in March 1996 for Butch Laswell who died several hours after failing to land a 65-foot leap over a suspended walkway at Si Redd's Oasis resort in Mesquite, 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas. A side wind proved disastrous; Laswell missed the landing ramp by about a foot.
Lt. Gov. Lonnie Hammargren, a neurosurgeon, will head up Knievel's medical team that includes Dr. Dale Carrison of University Medical Center who also works the Las Vegas speedway.
Hammargren stirred controversy after Laswell's jump, claiming the stuntman would have lived had paramedics permitted him access to the dying man.
Paramedics held him back as Laswell was put into the ambulance because Hammargren was not part of the pre-arranged medical team. Paramedics similarly refused the neurosurgeon's demands for a knife which he later said he needed to cut Laswell's throat enough to aid his compromised breathing.
An autopsy determined Laswell, a friend of the Knievels, died of a crushed larynx.
Spanky Spangler, with 21,000 completed stunts and only two injuries, said tragedies like Laswell's are the reality that goes with the thrill.
"When you're doing something live, it's the most gratifying because you're on your own," unlike the many Hollywood stunts he's done, cushioned by the magic of television angles and retakes.
Spangler performed with Robbie Knievel a few years back in the Houston Astrodome. Their "over-under" stunt saw Robbie on his motorcycle jumping over Spangler's oncoming car.
"When you're doing stunts, all the variables are against you," Spangler said. "But when Mother Nature's against you as well, and you're trying to go for a world record, it makes it all that much harder. Robbie's a go-for-it guy."
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