Daredevil motorcyclist Evel Knievel dies, aged 69, after years of ill health.

EVEL KNIEVEL, the hardliving motorcycle daredevil whose exploits made him an international icon in the 1970s, died last night. He was 69.

Knievel's death was confirmed by his granddaughter, Krysten Knievel. He had been in failing health for years, suffering from diabetes and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, an incurable condition that scarred his lungs.

Knievel had undergone a liver transplant in 1999 after nearly dying of hepatitis C, likely contracted through a blood transfusion after one of his boneshattering spills.

Longtime friend and promoter Billy Rundel said Knievel had trouble breathing at his Florida condominiumand died before an ambulance could get him to a hospital.

"It's been coming for years, but you just don't expect it. Superman just doesn't die, right?"

Rundel said.

Immortalised in Washington's Smithsonian Institution as "America's Legendary Daredevil", Knievel was best known for a failed 1974 attempt to jump Snake River Canyon on a rocket-powered cycle, and a spectacular crash at Caesar's Palace, in Las Vegas.

He suffered nearly 40 broken bones before he retired in 1980.

Although he dropped off the pop culture radar in the 1980s, Knievel always had fans and enjoyed a resurgence in popularity in recent years.

CAPTION(S):

Evel Knievel standing in front of Snake River Canyon, Idaho, which he jumped on September 8, 1974; Evel Knievel