Have I missed something here ?
Tried to start with the recoil starter for if the need should ever arise.
Could hardly turn motor over against compression !  I have a thought that I read somewhere about a decompression aid, but can't now find reference, am I correct ?

I have a 13 model and it has no de-compression. Pull the rope to get it just past compression, then retract the rope and give a good full pull.

Yep...That works ok - Thanks Murdo. Just hopefully never get a backfire if doing it !

I have a 2012, and like mentioned earlier works if you get the piston in the right spot.

One thing I thought I would mention however is with the efi, for the life of me i can't get the bike to start if the battery is totally dead. Seems like you need enough juice to run the fuel pump for the injectors, Unless there is a trick out there. Besides remembering to the  the lights off!

Has been my experience that efi won't run with a completely dead battery. Low will start, but run bad for a bit.

My 2013 has carburettor, so no probs there. Yeah, starting is a doddle with piston just over tdc as suggested.

I'd watch out when using that starter cord.  I also understood there to be a decompression feature, but found out the hard way that there isn't.  My forefinger tendon running up my arm was strained giving me a shooting pain up my forearm and was sensitive for several days.  I am always careful with starter pulls because of a friend's bad experience, but this one was unexpectedly hard and caught me off guard.  My co-worker detached his middle finder tendon starting a pressure washer and it retracted up his arm like a spring, requiring surgery. Unfortunately, he later suffered a stroke while recovering - Ugh!

Crappy thing to have happen. That's why you need to fudge the motor over just past the second resistance. Then you know you have almost a full crank rotation and a half of clear spin to get that crank moving past the next compression. If you just haul on it wherever the crankshaft stopped last you don't know when it will hit compression and if it does so right away then bad things happen. I have rope started my Suzuki 750 lots of times, even from sitting on the quad, and I'm no superman.