As preparation for what is expected to be a tough budget this week, the Minister for Finance could do worse than study videos from the career of the late daredevil Evel Knievel, writes Frank McNally
The death-defying stunts of the Irish economy have been entertaining the world for more that a decade at this stage, breaking records for both height and distance. The trick now is to get the motorbike down in a controlled manner. Unfortunately, as Knievel's exploits demonstrate, this can be the most difficult part of the operation.
It was the stunt man's greatest successes that came closest to killing him. A prime example was the 1968 attempt to jump 150 feet across the ornamental fountains at Caesar's Palace, Las Vegas. His take-off was perfect. So was his arc: he cleared the fountains easily. Then he crash-landed and spent a month in a coma.
Similarly, at London's Wembley Stadium in 1975, he comfortably leapt the 13 double-decker buses, as required, before sustaining multiple fractures on re-entry to the playing field.
By contrast, his highest-profile failure proved - in the end - less hazardous, despite involving an attempt to clear the mile-wide Snake River Canyon, in Idaho, on a rocket-powered bike. He never looked like making it. But his emergency parachute opened prematurely and he floated down to the riverbed, via the canyon wall, without adding to his world record for most bones broken by a single man (433).
Despite his exotic name, Knievel was born in that little piece of Ireland called Butte, Montana - a city where thousands of Irish people (including this one) have relatives, from the era when it boasted the world's biggest copper mine.
The spectrum of cultural life in Butte these days is defined by two summer festivals. In August, there is the Rí Rá, a celebration of (Catholic) Irish culture, involving traditional music, dancing, and an outdoor Mass as Gaeilge. But before that, in July, there are the Evel Knievel Days, a celebration of the city's most famous son, involving motorbikes.
It's fair to say the two events attract somewhat different clienteles. And yet, in his own extreme way, Knievel was very much the product of a Butte upbringing. He even seems to have had a bit of Irish in him (his mother was a Keough, or Keaugh, according to variations).
Certainly, he was a perfect symbol of this wild town, whose history follows the parabola of one of his more extravagant stunts. In a few decades before 1914, Butte grew from nothing to be a boisterous metropolis of 100,000. Then it embarked on almost as precipitous a decline, its fortunes plummeting with world copper prices until it very nearly died in the 1980s. The recovery continues.
Knievel's tendency to act first and worry about the consequences afterwards also mirrors Butte's reckless past. One of the few canyons he never seems to have been tempted to jump was the Berkeley Pit - the huge hole left in the middle of town by a century of mining, and now home to the most poisoned lake in America. You wouldn't want to land in that, even with a parachute.
A bit like the lake - which has become an alternative tourist attraction (especially popular with doom-laden environmentalists) - the Knievel connection inspires mixed emotions in Butte. Part of the problem is that, at least before he settled down and became a respectable canyon-jumper, he was not a good role model for youth.
During his earlier career, he attempted unsuccessfully to get into the local Prudential Federal Savings bank, although not by the conventional means of a job application. His career as a burglar did have high-points, however, and he succeeded in breaking into several other local businesses. He also had a profitable stint as a safecracker, before he found his real vocation.
When he hit the big time, after the Caesar's Palace stunt, his career coincided with that of the boxer Muhammad Ali. The similarity extended to the size of their pay-days. The fee for the Snake River jump, in September 1974, was a reported $6 million. A month later, Ali earned a mere $5 million for his part in the Rumble in the Jungle.
But even then, Knievel remained a controversial figure. When his former agent wrote a book portraying him as an alcoholic who was also addicted to pain-killers, Knievel attacked him with a baseball bat and ended up in jail.
It must have been long odds in the 1970s that he would ever reach retirement age. In fact, the headstone that will now be used on his grave was made as far back as 1974 - part of the advance publicity for the Snake River stunt - with only the date of death to be added. Canyon-jumpers tend not to live as long as, for example, accountants. But in the event, Knievel was 69 (about 140 in accountancy years) when he died last Friday.
With impeccable timing, he had recently found religion, thus facing the final leap of his life with an emergency parachute. He passed on after a three-year battle with a lung disease, which can't have been much fun. Even so, in the end, he achieved the most that gravity-defying stunt men and tiger economies can hope for, which is a soft landing.
fmcnally@irish-times.ie