Dave Mirra, late BMX legend, suffered from CTE

The diagnosis comes from a Toronto neuropathologist and several of her colleagues.

Dave Mirra. (Gerry Broome/Associated Press)

Dave Mirra, the BMX legend who committed suicide in February, suffered from chronic brain damage typically shown in football and hockey players.

Mirra is the first known extreme sports athlete to receive the diagnosis of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, the degenerative brain disease that leads to memory loss, depression and dementia. Dr Lili-Naz Hazrati, a University of Toronto neuropathologist, told ESPN The Magazine that the protein deposits in Mirra’s brain matched those found in former athletes with CTE.

“I couldn't tell the difference. The trauma itself defines the disease, not how you got the trauma,” she told the news outlet. ”It's assumed it is related to multiple concussions that happened years before.”

Mirra was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound on February 4 in his truck outside his Greenville, North Carolina home. He was 41-years-old and survived by his wife and two children.

Mirra at X-Games Eleven in 2005. Nick Laham/Getty (Nick Laham/Getty)

The BMX legend suffered "countless" concussions during his prolific career and suffered a fractured skull when he was hit by a car at 19-years-old, leaving him with a blood-clot in his brain. He once admitted that being struck by a car going 45-miles per hour hurts much worse than falling from 15 feet and hitting the ground.

“They said that if I was a football player, they’d never let me play again,” Mirra later told The Washington Post. “but I wasn’t going to let that control my destiny.”

Mirra sustained another career threatening injury in 2006 when he almost destroyed his liver while practicing before the Summer X Games. Explaining the event, Mirra said that he missed his landing and basically fell 16 feet, head first, and knew something was wrong when he couldn’t breathe.

“I ended up with a Grade 4 laceration on my liver, Grade 5 is the worst you can get,” Mirra told Men’s Fitness in 2007. “I spent two days in ICU and had to stay off my bike for close to four months. The biggest challenge is getting back to 100 percent mentally. But after four months off my bike, I was ready to take some chances again. I spent so much time preparing myself in my mind to ride that I was ready to go when the time came.”