Leicester endured a troublesome opening at Wolverhampton last night which contributed to a one-sided first half of their Elite League fixture.
Their problems began with a tapes exclusion for Nicolai Klindt and the misjudgement earned the Lions Captain a 15 metre handicap in the reserves race. Whilst Paul Starke won the race Nicolai was unable to make up the ground to get himself into a scoring position. Then two heats later came a double exclusion in separate incidents for Szymon Wozniak and Paul Starke following falls by the Leicester riders. That left the Wolves pairing the simple task of completing four laps unopposed.
By now the meeting was already slipping away from the Paul Chapman and Sons Lions and even when Norrie Allan played a tactical card it did not yield double points. By the end of the seventh heat Leicester were 32-9 down but then came a turnaround in performance that gained the team four consecutive drawn races before a 5-1 from Nicolai and Paul secured the side’s maiden heat advantage of the match. The flurry of moderate success went some of the way to placing some respectability into the score-line which ended with the Wolves victors by 58 points to 31.
“It took us the longest while to recover from such a disastrous start and in fact too long. When we did get the measure of the track the Wolves riders only scored four more points than us but the match was already lost by then” explained the Lions Team Manager Norrie Allan.
Scorers
Wolverhampton 58 points: Freddie Lindgren 10+1, Kyle Howarth 4+2, Jacob Thorssell 12+2, Sam Masters 12+1, Joonas Kylmakorpi 8+1, Mikkel Bech 9 and Ashley Morris 3+2
Leicester 31 points: Patrick Hougaard 6, Josh Auty 2+1, Aaron Summers 3, Szymon Wozniak 4, Davey Watt 3, Nicolai Klindt 5 and Paul Starke 8+2
