2000ft over the canyon… but 6 inches UNDER the media radar.

Earlier this week we posted about the recreation of Evel Knievel’s Snake River Canyon jump, well, Eddie Braun successfully ‘jumped’ over the infamous 1400 ft canyon.

The launch was scheduled for today, September 17^th….but the EVEL SPIRIT team opted to do it yesterday, possibly because of better weather conditions. There seemed to be virtually no crowd watching.

It looked like a textbook exercise and everybody is smiling. Hats off to the team but this is possibly one of the most under-publicised events in recent history. I don’t know why this newsworthy event failed to get any media coverage. It was rather badly covered by a local TV news crew and (so far) captured with a couple of quite frankly, terrible amateur Youtube clips. I sincerely hope that this occasion has been properly documented.  

I acknowledge that times have maybe changed and everybody these days is ‘Extremed-Out’ but I can’t help but think that this just shows what a showman and entrepreneur Knievel was. Always able to ‘Bring the Circus to town’ in what seemed an effortless and flamboyant way, hawking his stunts on a global scale.

I read that Braun Spent $1.5 million of his own money to make this happen. Perhaps the EVEL SPIRIT team invested all their combined resources and energy into the mechanics of making a successful jump, maybe overlooking the pre-event publicity and build up. Or maybe the mainstream media just don’t care about an ongoing 42-year-old story. Either way, it seems criminal that this wasn’t presented ‘live’ on satellite TV and it didn’t make ‘News at Ten’. I found a picture of a tattoo belonging to an English chap who made the pilgrimage to Twin Falls Idaho to witness the jump. Ironically, this tattoo could possibly make a bigger internet splash than the jump itself.

In other news it seems Rocket Sky-Cycles are just like buses…you wait 42 years for one and then two turn up together. Apparently, on October 18^th , self-taught rocket scientist ‘Mad Mike Hughes’ will climb aboard his own version of Evel Knievel’s X-2 Sky-Cycle and endeavour to jump over the ghost town of Amboy in California. You couldn’t make it up!

Dave Skooter Farm

All photos: AP