Dave Mirra Dead

[FiddySicks]

Dave Mirra dead of self-inflicted gunshot wound. He was 41.

 

I know we don't talk about "extreme" sports on here much, but dammit, this one just rips me apart. Dave Mirra and Mat Hoffman were my absolute idols when I was a kid. I knocked out my front teeth when I was an idiot teenager trying to act like I was pulling the Dave Mirra double backflip on my BMX. I got to meet him several times over the years too and he was an absolute legend. Why God, WHY?!?!

 

 

 

[JackieMoon]

Damn...

[dfwabel]

Three letters...

CTE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[FiddySicks]

19 minutes ago, dfwabel said:

Three letters...

CTE

 

It has to be. The kinda hits these guys take make the NFL look soft in comparison. 

 

There's a 30 For 30 about Mat Hoffman that really shows the mentality of these guys, and they're basically poster children for head injuries. The hits this guy takes are insane and the way he talks about it is kinda horrifying (0:36 is where this video basically sums it all up. No more words about are even necessary).

 

 

[Rockstar Matt]

This is awful. I feel like a piece of my childhood has died.

[burgundy]

My stomach's in knots right now.

 

This will definitely open up a wider discussion of CTE.

[JackieMoon]

9 hours ago, burgundy said:

My stomach's in knots right now.

 

This will definitely open up a wider discussion of CTE.

Not to go off the subject of Mirra but can you imagine the pain these people live in on a daily basis (ie. Pastrana)

[MEANS]

This one hits hard for me, having grown up racing BMX throughout the 80/90's and riding many of the legendary trails such as POSH/PUSH/Drexelbrook & 7-11's many of my close friends in the BMX community are also reeling from this loss.  RIP Miracle Boy

[A_J_H]

It's a sad news to hear. BMX is one of many extreme sports I like to watch, and Dave Mirra is one of the best BMX stars. RIP Dave.

[sc49erfan15]

On 2/4/2016 at 8:30 PM, dfwabel said:

Three letters...

CTE

 

Late BMX biker Dave Mirra had CTE

[Cujo]

So pretty much everyone who ever played sports has CTE to some degree.

 

Non-story at this point.

[dfwabel]

3 hours ago, sc49erfan15 said:

 

Late BMX biker Dave Mirra had CTE

Sadly, Mirra's death at 41 and the manner of death via self inflicted gun wound was the easy tell of the brain tissue issue. He knew of Junior Seau and Dave Dueson and his wife did too know about brain injuries.

[BeerGuyJordan]

11 hours ago, Cujo said:

So pretty much everyone who ever played sports has CTE to some degree.

 

Non-story at this point.

I strongly disagree. We need to have the discussion, every so often, for 2 main reasons:

 

1. Sure, football and hockey have it under the spotlight, but pro biking, snowboarding, etc., don't. More sports need to acknowledge this is going on with their people. 

 

2. Bringing it back into focus keeps attention on treatment and prevention. Attention leads to advancements and equals lives saved.

[Sport]

3 minutes ago, BeerGuyJordan said:

I strongly disagree. We need to have the discussion, every so often, for 2 main reasons:

 

1. Sure, football and hockey have it under the spotlight, but pro biking, snowboarding, etc., don't. More sports need to acknowledge this is going on with their people. 

 

2. Bringing it back into focus keeps attention on treatment and prevention. Attention leads to advancements and equals lives saved.

Yeah it's not a non-story at all. It's very much a story-story and it needs to be talked about every time another athlete kills themself so we know what led to it. 

 

This is real. There's the NFL denying for years that there's a link. Then they finally admit that there might be a link. Then they try to influence concussion researchers so they can get the results they want. There's people calling it a "War on football" every time a concussion study is published. There's CTE truthers who need to see this stuff isn't made up. For action sports like Dave Mirra's it's important that the risks that are associated with those sports are known. We've always known about the shortterm injuries like broken bones and the like, but seeing the longterm dangers associated with head injuries is far more important. 

 

If it irritates you that every pro athlete who suffered head injuries in their careers had the same brain condition then that's on you, but these things have to be reported. 

[JayMac]

It was determined that Bubba Smith of Police Academy fame had CTE from concussions sustained in his NFL career. So we are going back to an athlete that played the game 40-50 years ago. It's a scary truth that needs to be talked about more. It's not surprising that Dave Mirra's suicide is CTE related.

[FiddySicks]

Well, there's also the little matter of Dave Mirra having a pretty serious drug problem, so I don't think CTE was the lone contributor in this case. But it sure as hell didn't help. The combination of CTE related issues and the tendency to pop opioids like they were candy (kinda hard to really blame an extreme athlete considering the beating their bodies take) is just about the most deadly combination I can think of. 

[Sykotyk]

The problem with the CTE diagnosis (always postmortem) is that we don't know the true rate in society at large. We can guess, but we really don't know. We also don't know if your brain ever recovers if left unbashed for a few years or decades.

 

We also seem to accept football players mangling their bodies in a few years to a couple decades for a paycheck but sudden grimace at the thought their noggins have fared just as well as their bodies.

[Cosmic]

5 hours ago, Sykotyk said:

The problem with the CTE diagnosis (always postmortem) is that we don't know the true rate in society at large. We can guess, but we really don't know. We also don't know if your brain ever recovers if left unbashed for a few years or decades.

 

We also seem to accept football players mangling their bodies in a few years to a couple decades for a paycheck but sudden grimace at the thought their noggins have fared just as well as their bodies.

I'm still the same person I was before if I have a bum knee or a stiff back.  Am I the same person I used to be if I can't focus, can't remember how to get home, get extremely depressed, have wild mood swings, etc.?  When you're talking about the brain, you're literally talking about your personhood.  It's a different level of sacrifice.  It's one thing to watch a game and think, "Ooh boy, he's going to be sore tomorrow!"; it's quite another to watch the game and think, "That could be the hit that causes him to commit suicide in 20 years."

[Gothamite]

On 5/25/2016 at 11:55 PM, Cujo said:

So pretty much everyone who ever played sports has CTE to some degree.

 

Non-story at this point.

 

Yep, that's exactly what the NFL is counting on you to say.

[Gothamite]

14 hours ago, Sykotyk said:

The problem with the CTE diagnosis (always postmortem) is that we don't know the true rate in society at large. We can guess, but we really don't know. We also don't know if your brain ever recovers if left unbashed for a few years or decades.

 

Neither of those is really true.  

 

There have been studies on the general population, and the incidence of CTE has repeatedly been near-zero.  It has only been found in significant amounts among people whose professions included repeated head trauma (soldiers and football players were the two groups I remember),  That's strong evidence, and I'm not aware of any evidence at all to the contrary.

 

Similarly, we do know enough about the damage caused by tauopathies as to label them irreversible.  There's no reason to believe that CTE is somehow an exception other than wishful thinking.