EXPN Magazine. Finally. You've been to EXPN.com. You've watched the X Games on ESPN. Now a radically different action sports magazine focuses on the lifestyles of the action sports community. From Dave Mirra to the X Games. From the OP Pro in the Mentawais to the artwork of Jamie Lynn. EXPN Magazine.

Full color. Full life. Finally. Buy it.

The prototype issue of EXPN Magazine is available at ESPN Zones, the ESPN Club in Orlando, Barnes and Noble, B. Dalton, and at the X Games in Philly.

The following is excerpted from:
JUST WHAT IS DAVE MIRRA THINKING
The King of BMX is Nearly Perfect. And That's His Biggest Problem
By Chris Palmer
All pages courtesy of EXPN Magazine.

It's a cold, dreary spring day-one of the few days that finds Dave Mirra at home-and a good time to reflect on perfection. You would think that, at age 27, he has it all: nine X Games gold medals, a full quiver of sponsors and the first Dave Mirra Super BMX Tour. The Dave Mirra action figure is out and his new Freestyle BMX video game will be released in September.

But the 2001 X Games are only a few months away. And the new season means a whole new crew of riders gunning to take down the king. Mirra gets up and paces, looking out at the gray. The rain sucks. If he can't ride, how can he get better? How can he top last year?

And, you start to wonder, can Dave Mirra top last year? Think back to the park final at the 2000 X Games in San Francisco:

Mirra drops in, and when he blasts out of the quarterpipe you'd swear gravity has taken a vacation. The way he pumps his airs, rocking the bike back and forth, seems to extend his hang time. He doesn't need to rush his mid-air variations. No-hander to bar spin made so easy. He reenters the ramp as smoothly as a diver hitting the water with no splash. He guides the bike effortlessly over the sub box, skims over the spine. Then he soars up and out of the huge wall and sprints toward the tabletop. Up, up, he pulls an outrageously high backflip.

This much you understand.

Then Mirra keeps rotating, as if he has Crouching Tiger on the brain. There are no wires here, merely a double backflip. Make that a huge double backflip. He hears his music-Mike Ness blaring through the speakers-but not the crowd or announcer Steve Swope shouting, "Dave Mirra has done a double backflip!" Mirra's completely at peace, flowing and staying calm. Always calm. When he's done bending the course to his needs, he takes his helmet off and gives an embarrassed wave to the crowd. "When I pop out, it feels just right," he says later. "Really perfect."

But that night, the fears catch up. Perfection was not so perfect after all despite the gold medal hanging on the chair and the check for $16K in his pocket . . .

So, there it is. For the full scoop on Dave and what he's really thinking check out the prototype issue of EXPN Magazine available August 16th.

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