Fearless Eddie didn’t fancy a second jump
When Eddie Kidd said that he never wanted to do a jump like it again, you knew it must have been a pretty terrifying leap.
It was on December 10, 1979, that Britain’s most exciting motorbike stunt rider ever diced with death – and lived to tell the tale.
Just 20 years old at the time, Islington-born Kidd completed the awesome stunt in front of fans, media and other onlookers at the River Blackwater at Maldon in Essex.
He fired his 400cc Yamaha bike over an 80-foot gap, with a sheer 50-foot drop, above a viaduct. Throw in gusting winds capable of knocking him off course at any moment, and you can see why even Kidd said he would not fancy trying such a thing ever again. On his 400-yard run-up, his bike reached 100mph, but experts reckoned that if anything had gone wrong, he wouldn’t have been emerging alive.
Tragically, of course, Eddie’s career would end in disaster when he sustained serious head injuries at an event in 1996 in Warwickshire, when his bike crashed into an incline as he tried to jump across a drag strip. It left Eddie with speech and co-ordination issues.
His chin had thumped off the petrol tank, leaving him unconscious as the bike continued at speed.
After his amazing feat in 1979, Kidd jumped the Great Wall of China in 1993.
He would also star as a double for Timothy Dalton in Bond movie The Living Daylights, doing likewise for Pierce Brosnan in Goldeneye and Roger Moore in 1990 flick, Bullseye.
The crowd had gasped when his 80-foot leap began, when the winds did indeed throw the front of his bike up in the air. But the fearless Kidd, who turned 60 this summer, kept it under his control.
He landed not badly, nice and square, with just a slight leg injury for his troubles.
Away from the saddle, too, Kidd had an exciting, eventful life.
Eddie was married to dancer-actress Debbie Ash, the sister of actress Leslie, with whom he had one child.
He later married Sarah Carr, a Stringfellows waitress, and they also had a child before divorcing.
He also put out a single, called Heavy Metal, and he was in the 1981 movie Riding High, about a motorcycle rider.
Eddie Kidd was made an OBE in 2012. No one who witnessed his incredible feat of 40 years ago will ever forget his incredible talent.