INTERVIEW I OFF-ROAD RACER TARAH GIEGER
P56
(Technically speaking, it was a
KLX110, but it was onto dirt and
not a foam pit. Jolene Van Vugt
is credited with a flipping a full-
size bike to dirt in 2005.)
On the personal front, Gieger
married fellow Nitro Circus ath-
lete Dusty Wygle in 2017.
However,
Gieger's forays into
Women's Moto X Enduro marked
a turning point in her career
and after more than a decade
in women's pro motocross, she
shifted to the off-road side of the
sport, hitting AMA EnduroCross
at first, then AMA Hare & Hound
Nationals and the AMA Na-
tional Grand Prix Championship
(NGPC).
She found success in all fac-
ets of off-road, claiming her first
EnduroCross
Women's triumph in
2017, four H&H wins to start the
2020 season and the 2019 NGPC
Pro Women crown.
Her motocross-honed speed
combined with an aptitude for
all things off-road caught the at
-
tention of the AMA who drafted
her onto
the U.S. Women's World
Trophy team for the 2016 FIM
International Six Days Enduro
in Spain with the team finishing
fourth (often overlooked since
the American men won the FIM
World Trophy category for the
first time). She came back for
the 2018 edition in Chile where
the U.S. women's team finished
second and in 2019 saw perhaps
her greatest off-road achieve
-
ment when she, Brandy Richards
and Becca
Sheets topped the
competition in Portugal (where
the U.S. men won for only the
second time).
Gieger took a sabbatical from
racing in the latter part of 2020
and most of 2021 when she and
her husband decided to start a
family. After Mason was born,
The 2019 season was a great one for
the JCR Honda trio of (L-R) Preston
Campbell, Trevor Stewart and Gieger,
who won the Pro Women crown
in the AMA National Grand Prix
Championship (NGPC) Series.
