Stephen Alan Ladd – the name probably doesn’t ring any bells. But he deserves to be remembered, as his fire tunnel stunt must be one of the most dramatic pieces of daredevil footage ever captured. After breaking the record he went in again – and it ended in tragedy…..
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Stuntman Stephen Alan Ladd Killed – British Pathé (1972)
by inCatastrophicFailure
https://9gag.com/gag/aRX095Q
45 Comments
Absolutely horrific.
I lost teeth from trying to jump my bike like Evil Knievel!
I didn't just do jumps as a kid. As an adult, I do the same with cars. Never grow up.
"Accidental" death. Uhh, yeah, sure.
Crispy!!!
In Australia, when I was a kid, we had a young guy named Dale Buggins who was our primary school motorcycle hero. He did all the stunts, jumped cars, rode through fire, wore a cape, the lot. Then we heard on the news that he'd been found in a hotel room with an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound. None of us, being the age we were, could work it out.
I was part of a motorbike display team that did fire stunts. Fortunately, we never had any accidents. It was pretty cool(?) though.
I saw this on a TV sports report shortly after it happened. Maybe ABC's Wide World of Sports. I remember thinking how crazy it was that someone would do that. Memory stuck with me all these years.
The machines these guys flew were nightmarishly ill fitted for catching major air on. Back in the day, there were more of us expecting the usual "And down goes Evel" comment at the end of every jump than there were folks who thought he'd actually stick a landing.
What a mindbogglingly stupid thing to do.
You can see his hesitation prior to entering.
I am fairly sure with all the ramps we made in the late 70s in the street, none of us achieved more than a foot or two. Bikes were heavy back then and BMX's wernt yet a thing so it was Grifters or Choppers,no one dared jump on a racer with its skinny wheels
Why he went the second time really doesn't matter.
Just look up Steven Ladd to see the UNCENSORED video.. The video is sad but not nearly as graphic as what’s going on in the world today…I have no respect for “creators” who cover stories that attract viewers but censor because they are afraid of not getting MONEY… censored for ytube and yet Ytube has the video on FULL DISPLAY and didn’t even have a WARNING before the video!why not just stick to stories about flowers and fairies and candy canes and butterfly catching! Bunch of Pansies…
Raven, your channel is Boss. Terrific research, analysis and narration mate. Bravo brah. Top of the Shelf, A#1, King of the Disaster Hill.
Full footage: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=T1trHj8coaQ&pp=ygUMU3RlcGhlbiBsYWRk
Reminds me of all the “intelligent” Republicans in America…smh
The fire fighting crew didn't even have their hoses unrolled in preparation for an emergency. As you said, their job was to extinguish what was left at the end of the day.
You censored the whole point of video and wasted all of our time.
The reason people walk when they're fully burning up is that your muscles actually won't work under that much heat. Your whole body goes stiff and won't bend anymore. Nightmarish.
I went to the Evel Knievel exhibition at the H/D factory in Milwaukee in 2010…"As Bobby Knievel, I never earned a Dime, as Evel I earned $33m,problem was,I spent $35m" 😂😂
165 feet was a bit ambitious
Cremated himself
If (or when) ordinary life, is just boring!
Nothing has going terribly wrong!
Simply physics at work; if you try the impossible, you get a lesson!
Badly, this guy learnt it the cruel way, but what would have be the next attraction" to please the crowd, if this one would have be accomplished "successful"?
Darwin award recipient.
Eddie Kidd also had a tragic ending. Kidd was way ahead of Evel Kneval, he had real skills and the ladies loved him. RIP to all of them.
You have to go to the internet to see the entire stunt. YouTube won’t show it here because we are all considered delicate children who should never se anything bad. Unbelievable!
I had that CCM chopper (yellow), had the Evel toys, jumped the ramps, split the forehead, watched Bermuda's version of EK, our own "Big Smith" jump a motorised wheelchair over cars and in my late 50's still wheelying my bike regularly. Stay safe.
"A global superstar" and not "just in the states"?????
Idiot.
No wonder women live longer than men…
For a supposedly Professional Stuntman, he was grossly recklessly negligent!
Recognising and minimising risks should have been second nature to him.
His run had been successful, but never having factored in attempting a second run, he was ignorant of the detetiorating conditions at the tunnel.
As you said, the wind had changed and the fire had become a raging inferno in which the temperatures had risen substantially from those during his first run.
Around that time, a disturbing number of motorcycle one piece racing leathers of the type he wore were lined with Nylon or similar man made materials!
Nylon can heat weld to bare skin if a rider slides along a road surface and heat builds up, I've seen the aftermath of this!
In the furnace like tunnel, the leather suit lining may have melted onto his bare skin, he would also have been starved of air, as would his engine!
As you said, visibility was non existing, and a combination of multiple problems simultaneously occurring inside a raging inferno without a protective flameproof suit, balaclava, gloves and socks proved to be incompatible with life!
This outcome was entirely foreseeable and preventable…
With zero oxygen left inside the tunnel, his engine stalled almost immediately. What happened next is hard to think about.
0:23 – This is not me in the photo, but it could have been because I was that size on a bike just like that, riding over ramps like that, at the dawn of the 1970s. Except my spyder bike was purple with a 5-speed rear gear set. My friends and I said "EvelKneivel" so often it became a one word name.
The unedited video is pretty hardcore. Dude got about 10 feet from the end, absolutely engulfed in fire, went to his knees to crawl and just collapsed. If he would have worn a fire retardant suit, he probably makes it, seeing how far he got without it.
Ooooops
Great Fire Department…They didn't even have the hoses ready to go
Evel visited our town in Australia in 1979. They called for volunteers to help, our reward was free tickets to the show. There were simple cardboard boxes for him to land in if things went wrong.. Our job was the take the flat boxes, open them out and stack them. We were told to throw out any that were already damaged as the damage would make the box weak and risk injury. No-one supervised us so we could have used damaged boxes, not opened them correctly, a great risk just leaving the job to kids. For some reason Evel cancelled at the last minute. Fortunately Dale Buggins was also performing so we got to see a good show.
So many questions:
Why didn't they just stop him?
Didn't the firefighters have their hoses out already in case they had to, you know, put the fire out?
Why didn't they just stop him?
And ofcourse: why didn't they just stop him?
It's so amazing that they just let him do it. If I was a firefighter I'd just start putting out the fire once I decide it's too dangerous to try again. At that point no sane person would try it so might aswel put it out.
So why didn't anybody actually physically stop him? Azazing…
Sounds like his ego got the better of him….tragic but stupid at the same time!
Knock on the reapers door and eventually he will answer .
You should do the Eddie Kid story that didn't end well ether its sad he was British hero!🤔🤔
I have 0 sympathy for extreme danger activists
Humans will try anything for a record. It's the drive that created the chase. 😊
dare devil? more like fuck-wit.
Eddie Kidd's story has a tragic end too.