I grew up doing a lot of high risk individual sports. In pretty much all of them, I was in this weird position of being the top of the barrel skill-wise of people who did it casually and the bottom of the barrel skill-wise of people who took it seriously. So basically, to somebody who didn't try to be really good at whatever thing I was doing, I seemed really good, but to anybody who took it really seriously I probably was way worse than them at it.

As a result of this, I ended up having some mutual associates with people who were really good at whatever thing I was doing, due to the people who I were emulating and trying to learn from doing the same with the local pros.

In the process of doing this, I ended up having a lots of social media connections with people who were really good at whatever they did and constantly injuring themselves in really terrible ways. Broken ankles, hips so bad that they would need to be replaced if they crashed again, ankles that dislocated at barely any provocation, et cetera.

Personally, my exit from these sorts of activities was when I needed a reconstructive surgery on my ankle (I crashed on my longboard), but with some of the people who become pros (emphasis "some"), I think it might be because they can't not do what they do. I think to some extent (once again for some people) the adrenaline rush from doing risky stuff and pushing the boundaries ends up being a self-medication. If you are doing some new trick or hitting some new hill or whatever, after a while you don't get the same rush anymore. The rush comes from getting out of your comfort zone, being in a situation where you don't know if you will land of the truck or whatever. It seems reasonable that somebody who constantly needs to have that feeling would constantly push themselves to do crazier and crazier stuff and that such a process could be a road to becoming a professional.

I hope that this post is not disrespectfully speculative, as I don't know much about Dave Mirra, but this news story just reminded me of this problem that I have noticed in certain sports communities. I would not be surprised if there were a higher amount of people trying to overcome struggles with certain issues in extreme sports communities than in the general population.