Random As Rhyme

Everyone who lives BMX this weekend was reacting to two major events; The first was the news that Dave Mirra was in the hospital with a life threatening illness (bacterial meningitis) and the second was that The Canadian Beast, aka Jay Miron, sold the company he started (Macneil) to his former employees and is effective more or less immediately fully disengaging from the BMX world.

While both are significant nuggets of BMX news Dave Mirra is a tank and is damn near out of the hospital already. The news of Jay’s departure has left a lot of people wondering WTF happened.

For as long as I can remember I’ve looked up to the following riders; Mat Hoffman, DMC, and Jay Miron. There are a few more that I really respect and would like to (or have) meet one day (Foster, Bestwick, Nastazio for example) but the aforementioned three probably had the biggest impact on me at the age I needed to be impacted to keep the BMX fire burning 5 alarm.

Out of those three riders Jay stuck out because he was a Canadian shredder when Canadian shredders were relatively rare.

My first memory of Jay was when my mom called me at my dads house and told me to turn on the TV to some obscure television show. The tv show ( which was The amazing incredible or something like that) featured Jay, in full Schwinn gear on a bike with 4 pegs and bars a little bit forward, flying down a sketchy rollin from high in the rafters to hit a box jump below. He hit the lip and sent a double flip and wrecked, hard.

Before the stunned announcer could ask if he was dead Jay was responding with “I’m ok” and was already on his way back up the roll in to drop in and send a perfect double flip in front of a crowd of people who had no idea what was going on.

At this time I had maybe seen a handful of flips and never even thought a double was possible, and yet there it was.

I was blow away.

Once I dove further into the culture of BMX I realized that Jay had been around for sometime and could really through down hard on a bike, at every discipline.

Later in my riding, and while still doing events with the Action Sports Coalition, I was able to have several encounters with Jay and maintain somewhat of a relationship with him over the years anytime he would come back to Ontario.

It was on one of these  trips to Ontario where I was fortunate enough to see him ride in person. It was at a demo at Muskoka Woods. While the demo was great this was also the first time I was able to see first hand the rumored BMX had done to his body.

Immediately after the demo he had  a personal massage therapist on hand to stretch his body out for him so that he could walk the next day. It was a strange sight.

Jay, like a lot of the true pioneers of BMX, paid the price of pushing our sport with his body and for this we should all be thankful.

Without Jay (and the rest) there is no telling if there would be the Boomerang (aka downside whip), double flip, or 540 tailwhip. Jay suffered for these tricks that are now almost common place.

While some might question his decision to leave BMX entirely I must say that I understand.

Think of it as breaking up with your girlfriend but then being around her all the time watching someone else had what you had. Some of us can take that in stride but others can’t and need to get away before it destroys whats left.

It seems that after all these years Jay has decided that all he needs is to get away.

Peace out Jay, thanks for all the frames, contests, and inspiration. All the best of luck with whatever you do next.

Jay Miron Props Bio

Jay Miron in the First Macniel Video

Jay Miron In Mad Matt