Robin Carpenter (Hincapie Development) took everybody by surprise when he held off the favourites to win a stage of the USA Pro Challenge on a very cold and rainy day in Colorado. Now in Ponferrada for the U23 Worlds, the American sees himself as a dark horse for Friday’s road race.

A few months ago, Robin Carpenter wouldn’t be recognized by many cycling fans. The American had just finished a largely anonymous spring campaign in Europe where he failed to make much of an impact on the big U23 races.

However, a marvelous second half of the season has completely changed the situation for Carpenter. It all started with a great performance in the Tour of Utah where he was a constant aggressor and wore the mountains jersey for several days, before handing it over to his teammate Joey Rosskopf.

His big breakthrough came a few weeks later on a very cold and rainy day in the USA Pro Challenge. Under chaotic circumstances, the race was briefly neutralized due to the horrendous weather conditions at a time when Carpenter was the lone survivor of an early escape. The favourites never managed to catch the young American who held off Alex Howes and Tejay van Garderen to take a beautiful stage win on Mount Crested Butte.

Carpenter rode aggressively for the rest of the race and in the Tour of Alberta he proved that his results were no fluke. Again he was on the attack several times and again he finished second in the mountains classification.

The results have made Americans aware of his strength but as he has not taken any major results in Europe, he has flown under the radar for the road race at the U23 World Championships. Nonetheless, Carpenter has proved that he can be up there with the pros and so is an obvious winner candidate in the biggest U23 race of the year.

While the American cycling world may know his name, he is largely unknown in Europe. He hopes to benefit from his anonymity to catch everyone by surprise.

“I have higher expectations for the road race,” he told CyclingQuotes after having finished 23rd in the time trial. “It will be interesting since I haven’t been in Europe since the spring. I haven’t done a lot of the big races with the national team this year so I feel that I can be a little bit of a dark horse. People don’t really know who I am. I can play that to my advantage and try to make a move a little bit earlier and catch people off-guard.

“It will be me and Tanner [Putt] and hopefully a couple of other guys in that small group. It will be interesting because there is not much road between the top of that last climb and the finish line. You need to be pretty attentive to any accelerations going over the top at the end.”

Carpenter is one of the few riders who have had the chance to test the circuit on closed roads. He expects the race to be one of attrition.

“We did Volta ao Alentejo in Portugal this spring and after that race we drove here and had a police escort of the course,” he said. “We got to see it fully open. It’s going to be tough, 3000m of vertical. It’s going to wear on people. There’s going to be a lot of attrition.

“I haven’t done a Worlds road race before. I know the tactics are always a little bit strange. Everybody is serious. If you are serious, you are not going to hit out early in a breakaway with little chance. You are going to wait and wait.

“Whether it comes down to a reduced group or ones or twos and smaller groups coming in will depend on the weather. If it’s windy on the first highway climb, it could split up because it’s pretty exposed. There’s enough exposure that a crosswind will do a lot of damage. If someone is strong enough to actually get a gap on that last climb, it only takes a moment of hesitation for them to be able to hold a 5-second gap to the finish line.”

A disappointing time trial

Carpenter kicked his Worlds campaign off in the time trial which ended up as a disappointing experience.

“Today I told myself I would be happy with top 15,” he said. “It is my first Worlds. I may be 22 but it is the first time being here so I can’t have too big expectations.

“My ride today wasn’t too good. I had a good first half but then I got hit with a side cramp underneath my ribs. I was in a lot of pain in the second half and just couldn’t really focus on the ride. I was maybe 20 seconds off the best time at the first check and then at the second check I was a minute off. I lost a lot of time right there.

“I am not totally unhappy with it. It’s a decent ride. If nothing had gone wrong, I feel like I could have been between 5th and 8th.”

The time trial was marked by heavy rain and Carpenter was one of the riders who raced in the worst conditions.

“It was pretty bad,” he said. “With 5 seconds to the start, it just started dumping rain. It was like almost a little bit dry at the halfway point when you make the really tight right-hander but it was almost completely wet for the entire race for me.”

Chasing the dream

Carpenter may have had a breakthrough season but despite his fantastic results, he has not attracted a lot of interest from the WorldTour teams yet.

“It was a breakout second half of the season for me,” he said. “I was in Europe this spring and did the Nations Cup races. I still had spent the winter in the cold northeast of the USA so I didn’t have a great winter training. After that, the second half of the season has shown that there is some potential for growth.

“It a pretty tight year in terms of spots in Division 1 and Division 2 American teams. There hasn’t really been a lot of interest. Even my teammate Joey [Rosskopf] who is one year older and a lot better, has had a lot of trouble finding a spot in the WorldsTour.

“I’d love to. I am happy to take it one year at a time and being patient about where I am going. A lot of U23 guys sort of get stuck if they are in a U23 team and don’t move up to a Division 1 or Division 2 program right away. Then you’re kind of just out. It’s hard to find a spot on a team or maybe you don’t want to because people see it as a failure if you haven’t been able to move up right away.

“My team isn’t U23. They still have a spot for me next year. I can sort of just grow at my own pace and see what happens. I am optimistic about getting a ride somehow.

“The WorldTour is the high goal. It is hard with Garmin’s semi-merger with Cannondale because they take some of their riders. They have usually taken a couple of American neo-pros but the spots that they usually have, are not really around right now on Garmin. I keep my eyes open. I am happy enough doing the races in the United States. They are at a high enough level that a good performance can give you a chance.”

At such a young age, many riders still don’t know what kind of races they are going to target. However, Carpenter has a clear idea about his future potential.

“Most of the time [I will be targeting] breakaways,” he said. “If you are lucky enough, that can lead to the GC. In a mountainous Tour, I am definitely not a GC rider. I am going to have a massive transformation of my body type that is not going to happen.

“I know I am strong and have a motor that I can be out there all day and still be strong at the finish. Almost all my success comes out of breakaways, being able to play the tactics properly and having enough energy at the end of the race to ride away from everybody else out there. Sometimes that leads to success in the GC. When I was a junior, I was 5th in Tour de l’Abitibi because I made one key breakaway one day. I see myself as the guy who goes after the stages and maybe the one-day races.”