Concussion questions haunt BMX after Dave Mirra's death

When BMX freestyler Jamie Bestwick first started his career riding ramps and performing gravity-defying tricks, he landed on his head so hard his helmet split.

Even though he was knocked cold and forgot he was at a beach event rather than far away in his home town, Bestwick was back competing the next day.

“[A concussion] is not something that’s visible like a broken hand, or a pulled hamstring where you’re walking with a limp,” Bestwick said. “It’s like you had a couple too many [drinks], like you had a bit of a hangover. Back then you threw caution to the wind because who cares?”

Now Bestwick, and others within the BMX community, worry about the long-term effects of the concussions most have incurred at some point in their career.

The BMX icon Dave Mirra took his own life last week, shocking those who knew him and those who simply admired him through his sport. The question immediately arose as to whether CTE – a degenerative brain disease that arises from concussions and is associated with impaired judgment and depression – contributed to his death. Bestwick said you no longer have to look as far as the famous cases in NFL to see the impact of concussions.

“I never saw [the threat of CTE] coming, but I do now,” says Bestwick, although it should be stressed there is no evidence that Mirra was suffering from CTE at the time of his death.

“I thought [news of Mirra’s suicide] was a cruel joke. Dave Mirra’s life was nothing short of inspirational and aspirational. I loved everything the guy did. The way he was with family made me want to be a better family man. The way he found a new passion was insane, and even though I wasn’t doing triathlons, it made me train harder in BMX. That’s the effect he had on so many of us. To ever think he was the one who was struggling so much harder than someone else, never in a million years would I have guessed.”

Mirra paved the way for other BMX freestylers, by winning 23 X Games medals – 14 of them gold – and getting sponsors beyond the BMX world. Mirra’s work ethic and passion for winning pushed Bestwick to become the champion that he is: Bestwick, himself a BMX freestyle star, knocked Mirra off the X Games podium and won nine consecutive golds in vert.

Bestwick remembers, early in his career, going to a skate park in his native England a week after breaking his leg. Mirra was on top of a ramp and suddenly took off his helmet, dropped his bike and ran all the way down the ramp to say hello.

“I didn’t think he knew who I was,” Bestwick said. “From then on, we had an appreciation for each other. We were ruthless. For the crowd in attendance, we really delivered and pushed the envelope with BMX vert riding.”

And pushing the envelope, competing at the top level and trying more complicated tricks, sometimes led to crashes. It is an acknowledged part of the sport. Riders can soar more than 20 feet in the air, flip upside down, and a simple mistake could send them crashing back to earth. Hard.

BMX racers don’t reach the vertical heights that freestyle riders do, but they are going faster and have the added complication of seven other riders on the track and being clipped onto their bikes.

Donny Robinson, who won a bronze medal for BMX racing in the 2008 Olympics, estimates he’s had 25 concussions.

“I don’t see any side effects from it,” said Robinson, who is 32 and still races professionally. “Maybe some short-term memory stuff, but everything else is normal. But I do think, what if these things that happened to the brain hasn’t happened yet, what if one day it clicks? It’s petrifying.”

Robinson was six, riding his bike around a parking lot and jumping curbs when he fell and was knocked out. His father joked that when you hit your head, you’re fine. Anywhere else, you break bones.

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That was a common mentality, because as Bestwick said, concussions aren’t visible from the outside.

In 2011, when doctors told Robinson he couldn’t return to the track after a concussion, he angrily tweeted that he didn’t understand why they were keeping him off the track and that he was willing to die for his dream.

He no longer believes that. This past September, he crashed in a race and hit his head. When the American Bicycle Association told him he could not race again that weekend, he accepted their ruling. “I appreciated them protecting me from myself,” he said.

Robinson worries about who’s protecting the thousands of beginners – kids – who race. “I don’t want to imagine how many concussions go on at a race weekend that go undetected,” he said. “We need to start allowing kids and parents to understand how serious the effects [of concussions] can be.”

Cody Wilson is track director for USA BMX. He said the recent rules on concussions dictate that their medical crews follow concussion protocol similar to those already in place in other sports.

Helmets are required at all events. After a fall, the medical crew has a policy guideline it follows. If a concussion is diagnosed, the racer won’t be allowed to return to the track without being cleared by an outside medical professional.

At national events, they hire local medical crews. A racer who has a concussion will receive information about the condition, including symptoms to look out for when they are allowed to get back on the bike.

“The awareness is there,” Wilson said. “We were with a few different specialists, spending time looking into concussions and ways to circumvent or prevent it. The ultimate goal is education.”

Robinson said he is skeptical of how effective the medical personnel are, especially at the local level.

“I’m critical of the level of care to diagnose, and I’m irritated we’re not doing more for a racer who says ‘I feel fine’ when they’re not,” he said. “It’s going to take a bunch of people standing up or getting hurt for real change to happen.”

Robinson, who mentors young racers, is on the board of The Knockout Project, a website created by former BMX racer Jay Fraga to raise awareness about the dangers of concussion.

Fraga started the site after multiple concussions forced him to quit not only racing, but managing his racing team, and left him suffering from post-concussion syndrome.

“A few months into having post-concussion syndrome, I had come to the conclusion one morning that the only way I’d feel relief was to be dead,” Fraga said.

Thinking of his wife and kids, he forced himself off the bathroom floor to attend his twice-weekly appointment with a concussion doctor. When he opened the door of the office, he saw a waiting room full of children.

“I pretty much lost it at the thought of a kid going through what I was and having to go to school, get good grades and function in society,” he said. “The biggest thing was that the physical pain was so outrageous and complex that I couldn’t imagine any kid being able to fully explain to any doctor what that was like. That really got to me.”

So he started the site, which features first-person accounts from athletes who have suffered concussions. The site also contains information on what to do if you have a concussion and provides resources for more information.

He especially wants athletes to understand the repercussions of ignoring symptoms of concussions, himself being the prime example.

“BMX is a little bit of a sport full of outlaws,” Fraga said. “Everyone who sticks in the sport is tough and has a chip on their shoulder. Trying to get people to understand that hitting your head has consequences and needs to be taken seriously has been an uphill battle for me.”

Bestwick wants every athlete who has been knocked out, who’s suffered from multiple concussions, to get themselves checked out by medical professionals. Especially those competitors whose symptoms are affecting everyday life.

That can include brain scans to mental health assessments. Bestwick fractured his skull in 2013 and sought professional help. He still checks in to make sure he is physically healthy and also in the right frame of mind.

“Everybody has bad days, but those days can be magnified by concussion,” Bestwick said. “Men are the ones who need to be more open and more proactive. If you need help, go see help. If you’re scared, point it out to a loved one. A male in professional sports, they’re not going to talk about something that makes them feel not tough.

“Open up. Share it. Tell somebody. You’re not lesser of a person, you’re a far greater person for looking for help.”

Bestwick said every rider wonders why Mirra, who was 41, didn’t seek help. Mirra portrayed a life full of family and adventure in his social media posts, and seemed larger than life. Only his close-knit group of friends and family might have seen signs of depression.

A positive, long-lasting impact of Mirra’s death for Bestwick would be that others will reach out and know they are not alone ­ whether their problems are caused by concussion or not.

“He was one of the greatest action sports athletes of all time,” Bestwick said. “But no matter how the picture was painted to the world, he was crying on the inside and screaming for help.”

• In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-273-8255. In the UK, the Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14.