Mirra Goes Big!

A few years back, I did some photo shoots with Dave Mirra at Danny Way's SuperRamp in downtown San Diego. Danny really respected Dave and everyone thought it was a good idea to have Dave see what he could do on the ramp. This was the era before the humongous MegaRamp dimensions (the size that is now commonly used in the X-Games) were around and up to this point, the only thing in this scale was Hoffman's quarter pipe that he was pulled in to by a motorcycle to set the world record. Well Dave also thought that with the right ramp, he could break the record which had stood for so long.

The ramp had 18 foot transitions with about 2 feet of vertical, so in theory it was thought he should be able to go about that high above the ramp. The top shot I did with my Hasselblad and I think it is much more interesting, but since we were documenting the height of the air, it was instead decided to use a more front-on perspective. The top shot was also done a couple of days before the attempt when Dave was getting used to the ramp. The photo was never used and a lot of real BMX'ers thought his style in the air was too "dead sailor" and boring. So in to the archive it went and still sits to this day (okay, I'm using it here). The bottom shot is the shot we used along with the shot that Mike Blabac did from the deck (you can see him squatting down) with his Hasselblad and a fisheye and strobe. We used both of our shots in a split down the page and was incorporated in to mainstream advertising (Rolling Stone, etc.) and point of purchase, catalogs and various other DC marketing. This is actually the World Record air and was confirmed by the Guiness Book of Records.

What you don't see is the crash he took in one of his earlier attempts. He went a little too far over the deck and hung up on his back wheel. His wheel "taco'd" and he flew to the bottom on his shoulder. It literally shook the ramp and I still wince thinking about it to this day. Fortunately, he dusted himself off and took it without too much damage. Wow.