THE issue of the going stick and its accuracy raised its head again last week, with the blithe admission by James Sanderson, Clerk of the Course at Thirsk, that he invents his own going stick readings to make them fit in with his own interpretation of how the going looks.

In an interview with racing content creator Jack Veitch, he admitted altering an official going-stick reading of 8.6 for the most recent Thirsk fixture, putting 7.6 on the official BHA website as he felt that the latter number better reflected the state of the ground.

Sanderson also suggested that his approach was mirrored by other Clerks who, like him, “don’t trust” the going stick reading. Sanderson is an experienced Clerk, and it should be noted that very few trainers would have much to complain about in terms of the state of the turf at Thirsk, which is an excellent track producing big fields, whether the ground is firm or heavy.

His assessment of the going is probably more reliable than most in his line of work, but that does not mean that what he has done is excusable, and his attitude towards the gathering of scientific information is regrettable given the need for such information to be accurate before it can be anaylsed properly.

Sanderson spectacularly misses the point about what he’s been tasked to do with the going stick when he says: “Unless someone is collating data from all 60 courses and analysing it over many years, it’s pointless.”

Since TurfTrax’s going stick was adopted by British racing as the primary method of assessing the going 16 years ago, collating and analysing that data has been exactly what TurfTrax and racing’s rulers have been doing.

It’s just misunderstood

The great misconception about the going stick is that there is an absolute linear correlation between the reading and the accepted state of the going that is common to all courses. Although the lower the reading, the softer the ground and vice versa, good ground at one track will produce a different going stick reading to another, and the only way to be able to be confident about converting a stick reading to a going description is a wealth of historic and site-based information for each venue.

Sanderson – good groundsman that he is - is arrogant enough to believe that the science isn’t smart enough to reflect his own skills. In truth, he simply doesn’t understand how science works, because he takes a simplistic approach rather than realising that the figures themselves, rather than any individual’s interpretation of them, are the key metric.

The going stick figure is subject to site-specific variables, meaning that different tracks can produce the same going description despite widely varying going stick readings, and Thirsk is an historical outlier. Back in the days when the figures weren’t being manipulated, Thirsk was responsible for the highest ever going stick reading of 12.8 back in 2009. That saw a meeting in which 61 horses ran in six races, with no reported complaints at the time.

Sanderson’s justification for altering Thirsk’s readings is that, if he published a figure of 8.6 for good ground, there would be a raft on non-runners. In doing so, he takes racing’s participants for fools, and trainers themselves will always make decisions on whether to run based on their own interpretation rather than as a knee-jerk reaction to one piece of data.

Given so many were happy to run on officially firm ground at Thirsk in 2009, despite a published going stick reading of 12.8, it’s very hard to imagine that an accurate measurement now would see them rushing to withdraw. They aren’t fools, but by presenting his own altered data “so people can interpret it better”, Sanderson makes himself one.

Spoiling science

It’s not for those given the job of collating scientific data to decide what the data should be in advance, as it’s in calibrating for actual correlations between readings taken and post-race time analysis that we find the correct way to interpret those readings. Fiddling with them in advance merely masks the truth and spoils the science.

The fact that Clerks are incentivised to maximise field sizes means they are open to accusations of bias in terms of interpreting the state of the ground that they are responsible for. While most tracks give going reports which are fairly accurate when checked against race-time analysis, there are always a few examples of the official description being closer to what Clerks would like it to be to encourage participation than to what subsequent analysis of times would suggest. This once again brings up the question of whether official going descriptions should be provided by a truly independent body.

“How can it possibly be left to Clerks of Courses,” asks former trainer Mark Johnston in his latest Bletherings. “People with such an extreme vested interest, to assess and publish the official going report? It is completely nonsensical and, when you consider the huge resources that the BHA are now pouring into other areas because they do not trust the people they themselves licensed, it beggars belief that they can’t provide an independent assessment of the state of the ground the horses are racing on.”

It is hard to argue with Johnston’s sentiments, and I feel that it is now incumbent on racing’s rulers to deal with what has happened in a proactive and positive way, as if Sanderson is to be believed that Clerks are changing the official readings taken on track to produce results which make more sense to them, then the utility of the going stick is being seriously undermined, and the data previously analysed is compromised.

There should be an easy way for racing’s consumers, including but not limited to trainers and owners, to see a full history of accurate going readings for each track, along with the official going description given by the Clerk and an independent going description such as that provided by Timeform (or Raceform, or Proform) based on time analysis.