Robbie Knievel knows the odds of being a famous daredevil.

“You can take the ramp at a good speed. A chain breaks. A spark plug dies,” Knievel says. “The bike won’t make the other side. I come down wrong. I slam into the other ramp and break my neck. I’m paralyzed the rest of my life or I’m dead. That’s what scares me most. Not so much dying, but being paralyzed.”

That’s the draw for daredevil stunts, too.

“It’s like NASCAR,” he says. “A lot of people come because they want to see a crash. Or see someone get hurt. A few sick people want to see somebody get killed.”

Knievel knows this because he’s been making motorcycle jumps since an age when most kids were still riding bicycles. He has daredeviling in his blood.

Kaptain Robbie Knievel is the record-breaking son of the legendary stunt cyclist Evel Knievel.  This Saturday, July 3, he plans to defy the odds again by jumping the Wild Adventures lake.

At approximately 6 p.m. Saturday, when the winds are right, Knievel will roar up a ramp built upon barges set out on the lake.

If all goes as planned, he and his motorcycle will soar an open space of lake that’s equivalent to the approximate length of 30 cars. He will land on a ramp erected on another set of barges at the opposite end of the lake.

It will be the first-ever attempt at a jump that both starts and ends on water. The ramps use a dozen barges, weighing 117 tons. The force of the jump is similar to falling off a three-story building.

This past weekend, Knievel arrived at Wild Adventures to prepare for the jump. His stunt team had already installed the barges by Monday afternoon. Stunt coordinator “Spanky” Spangler has been preparing the ramps.

Spangler has handled the technical aspects of Knievel’s jumps for years. Robbie Knievel handles the guts — having the guts to make the jump, as well as the gut intuition of knowing when everything seems right for the jump.

“I’m the gut guy,” Knievel says, handling rounds of interviews while sitting in the comfort of his tour bus.

Sipping from a cup of Jack Daniel’s, Knievel takes each question in stride.

For a man who pushes motorcycles up and over a hundred miles an hour to soar over cars, buses, and lakes, he is relaxed. He’s in no rush to move onto the next interview or the next thing his afternoon entails.

“When you do what I do for a living, you do what you want to do on your days off,” Knievel says, taking another sip from the Styrofoam cup.

Come jump day, “I don’t drink,” he says. “I may have a shot early in the day to handle the   butterflies and the cockroaches, to steady my nerves, but I don’t get drunk. … I have a spiritual belief that my dad is in heaven. But I don’t think people in heaven can see what we do down here. The Bible talks about no sorrow being known in heaven. And if they could see us down here, I think there’d be sorrow in heaven.”

Robbie Knievel proudly talks about his father: Robert Craig “Evel” Knievel. Evel Knievel crashing into the 13th and final bus of his London jump. The action figures on revved-up toy motorcycles (there was even a young Robbie Knievel action figure during the days when his father’s image appeared full page on the backs of most American comic books). One of his record-setting jumps over 14 buses earned ABC’s “Wide World of Sports’” highest television rating ever. Evel Knievel’s red-white-and-blue Elvis-style jumpsuit. The Snake River Canyon rocket cycle.

“I wanted to walk in my dad’s footsteps,” Robbie Knievel says. “I wanted to live my dad’s life.”

While Evel Knievel retired at the age of 37, Robbie Knievel is 48 and still going strong. His past accomplishments include successfully completing 250 professional jumps, earning 20 world records, jumping the Caesar’s Palace fountain in 1989, a building-to-building jump in 1999, and a jump across a portion of the Grand Canyon in 2000.

Following his Wild Adventures jump, Robbie Knievel will likely perform two stunts that take him back into his father’s footsteps.

His next scheduled jump is in London where his father made the unsuccessful attempt to jump 13 buses. Robbie Knievel is looking to leap across 16 double-decker buses.

Then, he plans to turn his sights on Snake River Canyon.

In 1974, Evel Knievel attempted to jump the Idaho canyon on a rocket cycle. At take-off, the chute released on the cycle and Knievel floated down to safety. Some have speculated that Knievel pushed the chute release. Robbie Knievel disagrees with this assessment, saying the chute released because of a malfunction. “He worked too hard and too long to jump that canyon to have released the chute,” Robbie Knievel says.

Evel Knievel died in 2007, about 30 years after retiring from performing major feats. Robbie Knievel is already 11 years past the age of his father’s retirement, but he does not see a change in lifestyle any time soon.

“Dad knew when it was time to retire. He felt it,” Robbie Knievel says. “I’ll know, too, but I don’t feel it’s time to quit yet.”

SHOWTIME

Robbie Knievel is scheduled to jump the Wild Adventures lake, 6 p.m. Saturday, July 3, as part of the park’s All-American Weekend. The jump is part of regular admission. More information: Call (229) 219-7080; or visit www.wildadventures.com