Brent Bookwalter at the Giro almost pulled off the ride of his life!

Bookwalter beaming after runner-up ride

He almost won stage one of the Giro. He takes 2nd!

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Brent Bookwalter (BMC) came within a few "subtle" pedal strokes of the biggest win of his career and Brent is in our data base. Brent stopped the clock just two seconds shy of the maglia rosa in the opening stage of the 2010 Giro d’Italia.

Bookwalter, 26, from Western NC, that might be viewed as the alps of of NC was fitted by Andy Applegate who performed fits for WN by a request from much known, long time coach Rick Crawford of CO.

“I am a little speechless — my head is still spinning a little bit,” Bookwalter said after the stage. “I really had no expectations of doing a ride like that going into it.”

Bookwalter had never finished in the top 10 of any European time trial he’s started since turning pro with BMC in 2006.

He’s no stranger to winning prologues — he won the leader’s jersey in the 2009 Tour of Utah — the Giro d’Italia is a whole other kettle of fish. It can take years to hone your skills, you just don't say one day I am going to go on the PGA Tour and win the Masters!

Western North Carolina has a technical nature to its roads, they are up & down and all around!

I know, I grew up in Brevard, N.C.

“The distance and technical nature of the course suited me,” Brent said. “I had no pressure; this is my first grand tour, which also helped. It’s really exciting to do a good ride.”

Bookwalter’s time was good enough to even edge teammate Cadel Evans by fractions of a second. The world road champ settled into third behind Brent.

“It’s a very special situation to have a guy like Cadel come in to say, ‘Impressive ride,’ it really means a lot,” he said.

Now that will provide the kind of confidence you need to race at the top level.

We can't claim anything, but it sure makes you feel good to know that we have some the fastest people on the planet in our data base. That they would even send their girl friend to one of our dealers for help. That they used our CAD in an attempt to get faster and they do!

This is a learning process and we all have to learn and it seems Brent has done his homework.

Muscles have a line-of-action at the microscopic level, on the macroscopic level, muscle fibers are grouped together and with high-tech we can concern their line-of-action, their direction-of-pull. Rather than being one massive muscle, many are really series of smaller compartments that run in somewhat the same direction, rather they really run in slightly different directions.

Each compartment provides a subtly different pull on the lever arm. We have learned which ones does what and to what degree.

Its the "subtle" difference that are difficult to analyze, but that is what makes a difference.