BMX History · Rider Profile · Legend Bike Co

Dave Mirra

Fifteen straight years. From 1995 through 2009, Dave Mirra walked away from the X Games with a medal every single time. Not most years. Every year. Twenty-four medals in all, fourteen of them gold. For a long stretch nobody in any X Games sport had ever piled up that many, and in BMX freestyle there was simply no one close. When people call him the most decorated BMX rider of his era, that's not a slogan. It's the scoreboard.

He came from Chittenango, a small town in upstate New York. The nickname showed up early — Miracle Boy — and it stuck for the rest of his life. The kid could do things on a bike that didn't look possible, and he did them clean.

The brands that built him

Mirra came up on the Haro amateur team while he was still a teenager in New York — the company Bob Haro started, the one that helped invent BMX freestyle in the first place. From there he rode for GT Bicycles through 1991. Then in 1992 he joined Hoffman Bikes, Mat Hoffman's company, right in the thick of the vert and ramp world Hoffman was pushing harder than anyone. He turned pro that same year.

In 1994 he went back to Haro. That second run is the one most people remember. The signature Haro frames with his name on them sold by the truckload, and for a generation of kids a Dave Mirra bike was the bike you wanted under you. He stayed a Haro rider through the heart of his X Games run.

His own name on the down tube

Eventually Mirra did what a lot of riders dream about and very few pull off. He started his own bike company, MirraCo, and put his own name on the brand. He'd already proven he could win on anyone's equipment. Now he was building it.

By then he'd moved to Greenville, North Carolina. His brother Tim went there for school, fellow pro Ryan Nyquist moved in, and the three of them built and rode ramps until the town turned into a magnet for the sport. Riders called it Pro Town. More than twenty professional BMX riders ended up living there, and a big part of the reason was Mirra.

Bigger than the bike

The fame went past the BMX world. There was a video game with his name on it that put freestyle BMX in front of millions of kids who'd never been to a contest. He hosted television. He won an ESPY in 2005 for best male action sports athlete. And when he walked away from competitive BMX around 2011, he didn't sit still — he climbed into a Subaru and went rally and rallycross racing for years, then took on endurance events too. The man did not know how to coast.

The hard part

Dave Mirra died on February 4, 2016, in Greenville. He was 41. He left behind a wife and two daughters. After his death, doctors found he had CTE, the brain disease tied to repeated head trauma — the first action sports athlete confirmed to have it. The BMX world lost one of its giants that day, and it was felt everywhere riders gather.

Four months later, on June 11, 2016, the USA BMX Hall of Fame inducted him, alongside Dennis McCoy. The honor was overdue the second he qualified, and everyone knew it. Greenville later put up a memorial to him at the skatepark where he rode when he first came to town.

Strip away the medals and the fame and you're left with a simpler thing. A kid from a small town who got on a bike and never stopped going bigger. That's the part that lasts.