It was pretty wild to watch. Travis Pastrana, decked out in identical leathers to his iconic hero Evel Knievel completed a series of three jumps in Las Vegas last night that were done as tributes to the man who put motorcycle jumping on the map. Flying over piles of junked cars, a massive line of buses and ultimately over the fountains at Caesar’s Palace casino, Travis Pastrana’s high flying abilities were on full display. Riding a modern Indian Scout motorcycle prepared by Roland Sands, the History Channel show was designed to give a massive kick off to their “Car Week” programming. It seems to have worked.
While the show itself, outside of the vintage footage and jumps was cringeworthy at times with and had a curious lineup of guests that shared the ability to bring zero value to the table, we still thought the whole thing was fun. It’s the way of the world now that everyone sits around and complains about everything but at the end of the day, the main hook of the event paid off. He skied that motorcycle like a boss three times on the same night and lived to tell the tale.
While Pastrana’s jumps were the “same” as Knievel’s we do agree with the line of reason that favor’s Knievel’s attempts as being more difficult because of the lack of engineering in the ramps, the lack of horsepower in the motorcycle, and the massive weight of the bikes he jumped. It is way cooler that Pastrana did this stuff on a street stye bike than a dirt bike and we’re taking nothing away from his guts to even try this whole thing.
Lastly, Kelly Knievel seemed to have had a big hand in making this show. Kelly is Evel’s oldest son and unlike Robby, never was into motorcycle jumping or really even into the public eye. We found it kind of sad and Robbie’s name was never once mentioned during the show, nor the fact that he had jumped those same fountains about 20 years ago successfully. We’re guessing those boys do not get along.
The video below shows the jumps and replays with none of the weirdly forced interview sections of the show!
The two morons who were the announcers made me turn off the broadcast. It was hokey enough without them.
Brian: That is no “Street Bike” that is a very limited production Factory Flat Track Race Bike (a new inproved comparison to Harley’s Factory Flat track race bike)
https://www.cycleworld.com/travis-pastranas-indian-scout-ftr750s-roland-sands#page-7
https://www.cycleworld.com/indian-scout-ftr750-flat-track-racer-cycle-world-exclusive
Lohnes Quote” It is way cooler that Pastrana did this stuff on a street style bike than a dirt bike and we’re taking nothing away from his guts to even try this whole thing”.End Quote
Amazing how easy he makes jumps look! He certainly has technology on his side that Evil never did.
Back in the mid ’70s we would build ramps and line up kids side by side and jump them ! sometimes the last one or two would catch the rear tire ! …Couldn’t get away with that today …
Very cool, and he did it on an Indian.
Going into that whole thing, I was telling Sue Unit, there’s no way he won’t make it. He already knows he can do it, easily, or he wouldn’t be doing it live with so much fanfare.
Then at some point they showed his “training facility.” Wow, oh yeah he had “made” all three of those jumps already, numerous times. He made the impossible look so easy, so flawless. The only way he wasn’t going to make it was if the bike shut off about ten feet from the bottom of the takeoff ramp.
And yeah Brian, that WAS a mismatched crew of characters covering it. The guy on the desk who was leading the discussion, I sort of felt for him being in such an awkward setup. It was like he couldn’t decide what to say next……
I watched the first two jumps and went to bed. They had already pointed out that the 2nd (bus) jump was the most difficult, and he made that look almost fake, so perfect.