The Death of Dave Mirra

This is the Dave Mirra I think about.  Going huge, smooth, and landing incredible tricks, particularly at high pressure moments in contests. 

If you're a BMXer from any era, you've no doubt heard of the death of BMX legend Dave Mirra by now.  His death surprised everyone.  The nature of his death, an apparent suicide, was even more surprising.  You never know what's going on in another person's head. 

I didn't know Dave well.  The first I heard of him was in 1988, while working at Unreel Productions.  Pat, our camerman, came back from shooting video at a 2-Hip King of Vert comp.  Jay Miron was a young up-and comer then, and we were looking at something amazing he pulled that weekend.  Pat said, "You know who else you need to keep an eye on?  That Mirra kid."  Pat searched through the footage and showed me a run by then amateur Dave Mirra.  He wasn't nipping at Mat Hoffman's heels then, but he definitely  showed a lot of promise.  The next year, 1989, I was the cameraman traveling to all the 2-Hip comps, and I did keep an eye on "that Mirra kid."

Two or three years later, at a 2-Hip comp in Arizona, I got footage of still amateur Dave Mirra pulling a 540, three or four feet under coping.  He was small and had to muscle it around, but he landed it.  I don't know if that was his first 540 in a contest, but I remember he was really stoked to land it. 

Then, in 1995, came the Extreme Games by ESPN, which changed its name to the X-Games in '96.  BMX (and many action sports) had been on life support for years during the prolonged recession of the early 90's.  The sports were beginning to build back up.  Rider made videos and rider owned companies were taking root.  But ESPN at the time didn't understand action sports very well.  They didn't get the huge difference in mentality between BMX, skateboarding, snowboarding, surfing, and mainstream team sports.  They needed a "winner" in sports where the winner was normally forgotten a day or two later.  The tricks pulled were what lived in people's minds.  This caused a lot of drama.  On one hand, BMX and other sports were finally getting major TV coverage.  On the other hand, the early coverage really sucked.  It didn't really show these sports as the lifestyles we had lived for so many years.  ESPN was looking for someone to champion.  They wanted someone clean cut who excelled at winning contests.  Dave Mirra was that guy.  He went on to set a record for X-Games medals, and became the face of BMX to millions of kids worldwide.  This also created contention.  The hardcore riders of earlier eras tended to see Dave as a "contest rider."  They didn't see him hucking himself down sketchy ass rails in low-budget videos.  He wasn't known for inventing tricks so much as perfecting them.  So not everyone had the best opinion of Dave Mirra.  But no one exemplified all aspects of riding.  Dave was a phenomenal rider and excelled at contests, and through that he introduced BMX vert and park riding ro millions of kids worldwide.  That explosion brought money to people throughout the BMX industry.  He found his niche in the BMX world and ran with it.  In doing so, he became a legend of the sport. 

Many years later, I finagled a press pass to the '99 X-Games, and found myself on the deck of the ramp during BMX vert practice.  Dennis McCoy was the only one on the deck who really knew me.  I was pretty incognito.  Dave Mirra rolled in and did a couple of huge alley-oops.  Then he flew out right next to Ryan Nyquist, who happened to be sitting on his bike right in front of me.  Dave asked Ryan, "If I did an alley-oop far enough, it would be just like an opposite air, wouldn't it?"  It sounded nuts to me.  So, a minute later he dropped in and pushed alley-oops as far as possible, trying to turn them into an opposite air.  He quickly found out that the momentum of an alley-oop keeps you twisting, past the point of an opposite air.  It was a trip to see his process unfolding right in front of me.  He gave up the alley-oop/opposite air idea and went back to his regular bag of tricks.  that included an eight foot out 540, 11 or 12 feet higher than that early 540 I shot of him many years before.  Pat the camerman knew what he was talking about way back in 1988 when he first noticed "that Mirra kid."  Any way you look at it, Dave Mirra was one of the greats of BMX riding, and he is missed by many, many people.  I hope he's up there having a beer with the Godfather of BMX, Scot Breithaupt, and proving to Scot that freestylers aren't really pansies, as Scot thought in the early years.  R.I.P. Dave Mirra.