Almost invariably the Tour of Britain follows a script written by the strongest teams. They decide which of the minnows is permitted to be in each day’s escape, to scrabble for the minor awards, and they decree when the escape is reined in before the big names do battle for the stage win. Very occasionally, however, a rider strikes a more than welcome blow for the smaller fry. In Exeter the little-known Robin Carpenter, riding for the second division Rally Cycling team, hung on after a long break, much of it on his own, to take the double of stage win and race lead. The last time anything comparable happened in the British Tour was 2014, when Edoardo Zardini of Italy won the stage up the Tumble in South Wales, and took the lead for a day, although Carpenter will hope to hang on for longer. Although they do not enjoy the leviathan status of Ineos, Jumbo-Visma or Deceuninck-Quickstep, Rally are currently enjoying something of a run of success in cycling’s smaller national tours. In the last month they have landed three stage wins at the Tour of Portugal and one at the Tour of Denmark but in terms of the quality of the opposition this was possibly their best of the season. Carpenter, a 29-year-old from Philadelphia whose last win was the Cascade Classic in 2017, was part of the five-man escape that got away soon after the start and enjoyed an early four-minute lead, until Dan Martin’s Israel Start Up Nation team decided to test the waters around Dartmouth, splitting the field and closing to within 45 seconds before deciding it was all a little premature, with more than 120km remaining. Their effort broke the usual harmony among the World Tour teams and the escape was then allowed to gain almost eight minutes before the run over Dartmoor. The quintet were whittled down over the lengthy climbs past granite tors and boulders to Rundlestone and Warren House Inn, where there was still no consensus about who should chase, with the overnight leader Wout van Aert’s Jumbo-Visma doing the bare minimum, while Deceuninck-Quickstep seemed to be holding back. Perhaps they hoped that Mark Cavendish – a crash victim early on, with a damaged elbow – might be able to remain with the peloton or perhaps Tuesday’s 18km team time trial in South Wales prompted them to hang fire. As the mainly downhill run to Exeter began, Carpenter dispatched the last of his companions, Jacob Scott of the British team Canyon-DHB, but Scott at least had the consolation of a healthy lead in the King of the Mountains prize having led the race through Cornwall the day before. “I knew when we had seven and a half minutes that I would make it [to the finish] it was just a matter of making sure I got rid of everyone,” said Carpenter, although the remnants of the field whittled most of that away before the finish, where he had just 33 seconds in hand. Last time the Tour of Britain included a team time trial, in 2018, the winners were Jumbo, with Quickstep 16 seconds back and Team Sky – now Ineos – and Movistar in fourth and fifth. The quartet will start favourites for the stage, after which the pecking order will be clear for Wednesday’s tough mountain stage through Snowdonia. How Carpenter’s Rally will fare is anyone’s guess, although the race leader said his objective for Tuesday is “to make sure I don’t get dropped by my team.” However it ends, all the contenders for the daily “doomed” escape will take heart from his example.