NICK Morris admitted his chances of challenging for the Elite League Riders Championship on Saturday night were blown in his first two rides.

Swindon Robins ace Morris was excluded in his first heat at Leicester for twice touching the tape at the start and then trailed home fourth in his second race.

That left him with a huge mountain to climb and although he improved as the night went on, Australian Morris never looked like qualifying for a place in the latter stages of the competition.

Leicester Lions rider Jason Doyle took the title on his home track, the Australian outclassing runner-up Niels Iversen and third-placed Maciej Janowski in the final.

Swindon teammate, Troy Batchelor, finished fourth in the defence of the title he won at King’s Lynn last year, although he never featured prominently in the final.

There were some bright points for Morris, as he claimed a heat win on his fourth outing, but he finished with just five points from five rides and overall it was a night to forget at Beaumont Park.

“It was a little bit disappointing,” said 20-year-old Morris. “That exclusion in the first heat really hurt me and I didn’t even think I touched the tape the second time.

“Then for the second race we were still fixing our best up and everyone else had already had a ride, so I was just playing catch up. The first two races was a massive set-back, you can’t afford to score two zeros in the first two races.

“It’s pretty hard to come back from that but I felt like I did okay after that and was pleased with the way I rode. It’s just that you can’t afford to give guys like that a decent head start. But it’s always good to be racing those types of guys, that’s the level you want to be at. There’s good stuff there that I can work on and the experience will be good for me.”

Morris showed good early form at the annual Ben Fund Bonanza the previous week, where he helped the Australia team triumph in the International challenge at the season curtain-raiser and ran away with the individual honours, scoring 10 points at the charity contest at Swindon’s Abbey Stadium.

Although his Leicester outing was disappointing, Morris is happy with where he is less than two weeks before the start of the new Elite League season.

Morris added: “We are just going to keep going the way we have been going. Saturday was just not my night with those exclusions but it’s just one of those things.

“It’s been good to start racing again. I’ve now got Swindon press day on Tuesday, Glasgow press on Wednesday then a meeting on Swindon on Thursday. I can’t wait to start riding the bike again.”