14-time X Games gold medalist Dave Mirra has died of apparent suicide. Police discovered Mirra in a truck with a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Mirra is survived by his wife and two children.
Mirra made his name in BMX and was synonymous with the X Games from the very beginning. At the first X Games in 1995, Mirra won a silver medal in BMX Vert. That started a streak that saw Mirra win an X Games medal every year (except 2006 due to a lacerated liver) until 2009, eventually winning 14 golds, six silvers and four bronze medals.
Because of his instant fame in the extreme sports world, Mirra was one of the first people to market himself in the early years of the X Games. In 2000, he released Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX and along with Tony Hawk, were two of the first extreme athletes to enter the video game industry.
After dominating the BMX world for the first 13 years, Mirra wanted to try something different and turned to RallyCross. After doing both for a few years, Mirra moved to RallyCross full time and began racing in the Global RallyCross Championship in 2011. In RallyCross, Mirra didn’t have as big success as he did on two wheels, but he still won a bronze medal in the X Games in 2008 as well as a career best 4th place in Global RallyCross in 2014.
Dave Mirra was certainly a legend in extreme sports and will certainly be missed. While details of his death are scarce and it’s inappropriate to speculate, it was said that Mirra visited friends earlier today and also posted these two things on Instagram right before he died.
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A photo posted by Dave Mirra (@davemirra) on
Dave Mirra was 41.
