Reconsidering Dave Mirra, the Miracle Boy

The news came like a punch to the gut: not only had legendary BMX freestyle rider Dave Mirra died at just 41 years old but, all the more shocking, it apparently came by his own hands.

I didn't know Mirra, and I never met him. But he was hitting his prime, and the sport starting to gain traction, just as my friends and I were hitting adolescence: in 1995, when ESPN started the X Games, we were all 11 or 12 years old. Like countless other kids our age, we were caught up in the wave of "extreme (today: action) sports" right as we were seeking out a distraction just to the left of the mainstream. After watching these thrilling, high-flying personalities on a bike—something we could all relate to because we already owned bikes—we were hooked instantly. We absolutely idolized these kings of the concrete and visionaries of vert.

All this was well ahead of Mirra's biggest accomplishments, like his one-time record 24 X Games medals (14 of them gold), but the moment Mirra arrived on the scene, people stopped and stared. There were some prolific riders during that era and, it being the '90s, they were marketed a tad like pro wrestlers, complete with fanciful nicknames. Chief among them were Dennis "DMC" McCoy; Mat "The Condor" Hoffman, for the heights he reached off obstacles; and Jay Miron, called "The Canadian Beast" because he was from up north.

Dave Mirra, the youngest of the four, was dubbed the "Miracle Boy." Based strictly on the way he attacked a ramp or course, with such intense consistency and flow, it was immediately clear there was something extraordinarily special about him.

"Dave made everything look good," McCoy told me just a few days after Mirra's death. "There's a handful of riders that when you watch them ride you say, 'Shit man, I wish I knew what that particular thing felt like.' So many extremely talented riders pointed out that they got into riding BMX because of Dave. It's all part of this big chain that Dave was a massive part of."

"I'll always remember him as a superhero to our sport," said Hoffman. "He's one of a kind when it comes to talent on a bike. He was very competitive. And being competitive he would always push himself, so whenever the sport evolved to embrace that type of athlete, Dave was the token, perfect person to be in that role. As we all saw."

In an era of greats, Mirra was the greatest. He was Michael Jordan, and everybody else—even these other top riders—amounted to the New York Knicks. In his almost 20-year BMX career, Mirra brought a fierce level of competition, ability, and style not before seen in the sport, and that was rarely matched when the spotlight shined brightest during competitions.

But now it's time to be honest about something: I didn't like Dave Mirra. He literally won everything. Anyone else who entered a contest with him was competing for silver. I couldn't help but find myself constantly rooting against him. I'd hope for the slightest mishap, the smallest crash, so Mirra would be docked points and fall out of first place. I can't honestly say I recall that it ever happened.

"Did you guys catch last night's vert competition?" I'd ask my friends the next day at school. Of course they had. "Go figure, Mirra won again." We were just punk kids, but, at least for me, having to watch such flawless and unrivaled performance on repeat was maddening. It made aspiring to reach a competitive level seem preposterous.

Mirra was faultless and smooth—and he knew it. McCoy recounted how his protégé—his "little buddy"—playfully trash-talked him about everyone else shooting for second at a competition in Chicago in 1993. "He was right in the end," McCoy said, "because he ended up winning that event. Dave was just on."

In both the pre-competition narratives produced for TV and the interviews he'd give after he'd win yet another contest, Mirra came off as brash, smug, and egocentric—characteristics that seemed the complete opposite of the ethos of BMX that attracted us to it in the first place. In other words, Mirra played the role of the heel well, and was therefore easy to dislike. Then again, much of my perspective about him was built on how he was sold to eager audiences.

"I know ESPN," said Hoffman. "They like rivalry and that old-school sports story to be able to cover and create. But our community, especially at that level, it's such a small community. You're bonded by the trade; it's something not many people do, so it's like you're automatically bros."

In reality, I'd learn, Mirra traveled the world with his fellow Sprocket Jockeys—that was the name of their illustrious demo team—as just another one of the guys, even if he was wholly recognized by his peers as the best of the group. He was a consummate professional until the day he retired, in 2011. Those closest to him believe he made the decision to retire out of some combination of being weary of the persistent injuries and, as other younger riders rose through the ranks, at no longer being the best. So instead of continuing to take the physical and emotional punishment, Mirra opted to go out on his own terms and while he could still walk away at all. "It's easy to be wheeled away on a stretcher," said Hoffman.

At some point, everyone learns that the seemingly invincible luminary of your childhood, whoever it is, is as human and as vulnerable as anyone else. Maybe that's why the news of Mirra's suicide, on February 4, affected me so much. Recounting his full laundry list of near-death experiences decades later, it's made me realize how little I ever understood about him as a teen. And there were a lot of near-death experiences. Mirra turned pro in 1992, at age 18, and was nearly killed a year later when a drunk driver struck him as he walked across the street. It sidelined him for six months with a fractured skull and dislocated shoulder.

That was just the beginning. A hard slam on a vert ramp in '95 led to Mirra losing his spleen. The 2005 suicide of friend and fellow Greenville, North Carolina, rider Colin Winkelmann probably left emotional scars just as deep. And there was the crash in 2006 during an X Games practice where he severely lacerated his liver, keeping him off his bike for four months. In 2010, Mirra was hospitalized for bacterial meningitis, but recovered.

In 2012, a rumor spread that Mirra had died in a car wreck, but it turned out to be a hoax. So when McCoy first received word of Mirra's death earlier this month, he remembered thinking, This could be false. "There was that moment of just hoping this is some crap that's doing the rounds and this can't be," McCoy said. Those notions quickly faded into what he called a state of disbelief. "It was like a part of me had died," he said. "It's going to be tough for a lot of people for a long time."

Days before Mirra's death, Hoffman told me, they were exchanging jokes after McCoy posted an earlier photo of the three together on Instagram. "We were just kind of spreading a lot of love just a few days before," Hoffman said. "Was that a clue? I don't know …

"I just wish we knew more of what he was going through and could've tried to help bring some peace to him. I've been kind of wracking my brain with that, just trying to see if there was some clue or something."

Articles attempting to attach reason to why Mirra chose to take his own life sprung up almost overnight. Many speculated whether repeated concussions from bike crashes could have led to chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), the neurodegenerative disease found in football players like Junior Seau, who also committed suicide. Other reports suggested he was in a deep depression still trying to discover a purpose in his life after leaving BMX. Ever the competitor, Mirra tried to fill his life with new tests, taking up rally car racing (just missing a medal at X Games in 2011), elite-level triathlons, and boxing. He also hosted MTV's Road Rules/Real World Challenge for two seasons. His wife of 10 years, Lauren, simply requested prayers and privacy for her and her two young daughters.

"He could go from kind of one doubtful extreme to the most confident dude you've ever seen," acknowledged Hoffman, noting that it's all revisionist history now. "You never think anything of it, except for that was just Dave. But yeah …"

Early this year, there were inklings Mirra was considering a return to BMX after discussing setting up a vert ramp in his skate park warehouse in Greenville. For the first time, Mirra was booked to join Hoffman and McCoy next month at an annual reunion of old-school riders at Woodward West in Tehachapi, California. He had been on the phone with McCoy days before his death ensuring that they'd room together—DMC and Miracle Boy, just like old times.

"The fact that he was even going to go to it this year will make that even a tougher time I think for people to deal with," said McCoy. "We're left to dedicate things like that to him. He loved BMX as much as the rest of us, and it's just beyond tragic that we won't be sessioning together."