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Girroir overcame several health issues before fully focusing on his racing career. P78 INTERVIEW I 2024 GNCC & U.S. SPRINT ENDURO CHAMPION JOHNNY GIRROIR Johnny rode for Rod for one year, and then Ross Mauri with Trail Jesters picked him up for the 2020 season before Antti Kallonen elevated Johnny to KTM's factory team in '21. In 2023, Johnny had surgery on his elbow 18 days before the first race at Big Buck. "I had 21 staples in my elbow, and I went ahead and raced the Big Buck, and I got the holeshot," said Girroir. Dealing with infections and stomach problems, Johnny ended the year in eighth overall. The second round was at the Wild Boar, which is in Pal - atka, Florida, a sandy track that Johnny loves. "At the Florida round, my elbow got infected. It turned pink and I had to take a bunch of antibiotics to win championships in New England, so Rod Marshall out of Indiana came to me and asked if I wanted to race the GNCC XC2 class, and that's kind of how my GNCC career got started." In 2019 Johnny only raced the first three rounds and then he had to take the rest of the year off because he got an infection in his right lung. That's where Johnny's medical issues began. "So, you have three airways or lobes in each lung, and I was born with four in my right lung, so it was a birth defect," said Girroir. "My right lung had an extra airway, and it ended up closing off, and it stopped work - ing and the infection started there, so I had to sit out the rest of the year." to ride on, like sand and moto, and then you're also riding in the rocks, so you develop an all-around style. There's also this black dirt, like a crazy type of dirt, and then we have a moun - tain right behind me where I lived, which is like Snowshoe. So, I had pretty much any kind of soil you could ask for at those hare scrambles, at The Wick and behind my house. "My first big sponsor was when I got free bikes from KTM to race J Day. Brooks Hamilton was the Northeast KTM rep, and he's the one that helped me. But then I saw Ben and Josh were doing good in GNCC, so I wanted to go ride those, but Brooks didn't want to help me that way because he wanted