The news is reverberating around the Internet like a shockwave to anybody who grew up watching X-games. One of the biggest names in the sport, Dave Mirra, made the decision that he was done with whatever demon had been haunting him. It’s a sad and sickening ending for a man that many, myself included, had looked up to growing up, the man we saw riding a flying bicycle in every X-Games between 1995-2008, the man who always had a medal around his neck, the man who often had the gold medal. Mirra was one of the most successful X-Games competitors ever on a bike before he retired from riding in 2011. He had found a new love: rally and rallycross racing, and on the side he had been running triathlons prior to the news that police in North Carolina had found him in his truck.

I was one of those kids that looked up to Mirra, who wished he could ride like he did. I honestly don’t know how many aches I can attribute to trying to make an old Redline BMX bike fly over jumps I would find in and around western Washington. I never did figure out just how he managed to make it look so easy, but that didn’t stop me from trying. Many kids who grew up in the 1990s and 2000s did the same thing…Mirra was about trying to push yourself to be better, to go harder, to surpass your own expectations. Our condolences go out to his wife, his two daughters, and his friends and family. May he finally find the peace that he wanted to find.