Dave Mirra: A Hero's Death and CTE's Arrival

BMX pioneer Dave Mirra is the first action sports athlete to be diagnosed with CTE. In this exclusive interview, his wife, Lauren Mirra, speaks about his last weeks, his diagnosis and his legacy.

- Alyssa Roenigk

Dave Mirra is a BMX legend. For two decades, he was his sport’s steely-eyed, strong-jawed representative to the mainstream. He posed for covers, hosted a show on MTV and fronted his own video game series. As action sports took off, there was Tony Hawk, and there was Dave Mirra. He was the first rider to land a double backflip, the first to win three gold medals at a single X Games.

Following his death from a self-inflicted gunshot wound on Feb. 4, he has become the first action sports athlete to be diagnosed with CTE, the brain disease associated with concussions that the medical community is just beginning to understand. Dr. Lili-Naz Hazrati, a University of Toronto neuropathologist who examined Mirra’s brain, says it was indistinguishable from those of afflicted former football and hockey players. “I couldn’t tell the difference,” she says.

Mirra, who was 41, suffered a fractured skull when a car hit him at age 19, and he dabbled in boxing starting in 2011 after his retirement from BMX. But he also endured countless concussions during his BMX career, beginning at a young age. Hazrati says Mirra’s brain showed abnormal tau protein deposits—chronic traumatic encephalopathy’s trademark—in the frontal and temporal lobes. “It’s assumed it is related to multiple concussions that happened years before,” Hazrati says.