RIP Dave Mirra

Naw. One would have to be real real weak for that to happen.
Killing oneself for a female is dumb.
I will bet that we will soon find out that he may have suffered severe depression or even bipolarity. But one never knows why in the final analysis.

 

Very possible DPsup. Also, a lot of these sports guys get their drive from the manic phase of bipolarity. CTE doesn't help at all.
Time will tell.

 

Can't try to rationalize suicide. Getting old, problems with the wife, losing his BMX skills...None of these are reasons for taking your own life.
We will never know what was actually going on in his head...it's more than anything any sane person can try to figure out. Maybe his problems were brought on by CTE, but most folks with CTE don't kill themselves.
He killed himself because he was mentally ill and needed help, and that's all we will know.
RIP Dave

 

What are the alternatives? Stop playing contact or dangerous sports? I am willing to bet that even with the CTE potential issue most of the athletes would still choose to stay in their sports. It seems unlikely we develop a helmet or other safety measures to make any of these sports safe.

It's kind of like sharks and surfers. My non surfing friends ask me about sharks all the time. We all know they are out there but we still go out. When of our surfing brethren get attacked we basically rationalize they were unlucky and hope it doesn't happen to us. Probably the same with CTE and those folks.

 

I'd put a pile of money that it was problems with the female of the species that drove him off a cliff.

 

I met dave mirra and a bunch of other freestlye bmx riders in the early to mid 90s at the bicycle hub on rt34.even had his autograph.that was the bmx phase tho I grew out of that by age 13 lol.such a shame he took his life,i havnt been into the bike scene for a long time so Idk what his situation was.he was talented tho,shame,rip

 

Was it his poster in the hallway to the park that he signed that he had written "let bikes ride"? Pretty sure he may have been one of the last bikes to ride behind those doors. I started going in 97, and I don't think they even had the Thursday night bike nights at that point.

I remember riding a few of his pro model bikes over the years. The first gen haro Mirra was so effing heavy I could barely do a wheelie and he was cranking double whips with it haha

 

My mom took me and a buddy to the x-games in philly the two years it was there (early 2000's I believe) the one year she saw a dude signing autographs and she whent up to him and got him to sign a shirt for me. She had no idea who he was she showed me the shirt and I was like holy **** do you know who's autograph you got she like no I just saw the crowd. I was like that's Dave mirra you know the bmx game I always play that's him. She still tells people that story the weird thing is she was just telling my fiancé it like 3 days ago. RIP mirra first double backflip on a bike and multiple championships. Sad stuff but I do agree with you guys that it was probably repeated trauma its the first thing I said when I heard the news.

 

Idk if he had a history of head trauma, but personally I suffered a tbi in the marines and life will never be the same. We all get down but when your brain gets traumatically concussed it pushes on buttons that don't need to be pushed. A lot of the same symptoms of ptsd mirror tbi's, lucky for me I can't tell which is which. But suicide is such a painful topic, and I hope that his fam finds closure and love on to what happened with him. People think I'm crazy cuz sometimes I'm giddy in the water, I scream and curse when I can't scratch into one on a strong offshore wind, but I'm just funking around, having fun. Even when I suck (50% of the time I rip every time) I still seem happy af. Because that's all the anger and darkness getting out of me. 3-6 feet waves are the only thing that really unleashes pure happiness from me. Hopefully other dudes with a tbi or ptsd can also surf to get happy.