Dave Mirra: A Hero's Death and CTE's Arrival

— -- This story appears in ESPN The Magazine's June 6 World Football Issue. Subscribe today.

DAVE MIRRA IS a BMX legend. For two decades, he was his sport's steely-eyed, strong-jawed representative to the mainstream. He posed for covers, hosted a show on MTV and fronted his own video game series. As action sports took off, there was Tony Hawk, and there was Dave Mirra. He was the first rider to land a double backflip, the first to win three gold medals at a single X Games.

Following his death from a self-inflicted gunshot wound on Feb. 4, Mirra has become the first action sports athlete to be diagnosed with CTE, the brain disease associated with concussions that the medical community is just beginning to understand. Dr. Lili-Naz Hazrati, a University of Toronto neuropathologist who examined Mirra's brain, says it was indistinguishable from those of afflicted former football and hockey players. "I couldn't tell the difference," she says.

Mirra, who was 41 when he died, suffered a fractured skull when a car hit him at age 19, and he dabbled in boxing after his retirement from BMX in 2011. But he also endured countless concussions during his BMX career, beginning at a young age. Hazrati says Mirra's brain showed abnormal tau protein deposits -- chronic traumatic encephalopathy's trademark -- in the frontal and temporal lobes. "It's assumed it is related to multiple concussions that happened years before," Hazrati says.

Dave's wife, Lauren, received the diagnosis in March and is now speaking about it for the first time. She feels his presence as she walks though the home she and Dave built in Greenville, North Carolina. His bikes hang on the wall; his favorite quotes are cut into shelves above the bar. Then there's the downstairs bathroom. One night two years ago, Dave interrupted a living room dance party with his daughters, Madison, now 9, and Mackenzie, 8, with an idea: They'd use paint pens to scribble on the bathroom's black walls. They've since created a neon yearbook of notes and drawings.

I am thankful for my family, my friends, my school, Madison wrote. Hope anchors the soul. Hebrews 6:19, Lauren wrote. Go Big! Or take a nap! You didn't get where you are by the path of least resistance, Dave wrote near a drawing of a BMX rider above a ramp. It's Lauren's favorite.

"Dave didn't take his life for granted," Lauren says. "It was work hard, play hard, love with all you are and give to those in need. It was a lifestyle he was trying to instill in our girls."

Throughout his life, Dave Mirra possessed an ability to reach into impossible spaces and create something new. In action sports, this is called progression: pushing to invent and improve upon what exists. In his death, Lauren believes her husband will continue to shape his sport's future.