Senior racecourse officials enter GoingStick row to defend clerk over manipulation of readings

Two senior racecourse officials have entered the GoingStick row to defend Thirsk clerk of the course James Sanderson after he admitted to manipulating readings.

They argued the device, the use of which has been mandated by the BHA since 2009, is not an objective measure of the state of the ground and gives misleading results.

Kelso managing director Jonathan Garratt suggested that by changing readings clerks had actually helped to provide a clearer picture. He said: "If all clerks had simply published unadulterated data from the start, the GoingStick might have dropped out of use long ago.

"Apart from the fact that the same stick is prone to giving different readings depending on who is using it, every user knows it will occasionally give rogue readings. That’s not unexpected. There’s even a function for over-writing rogue readings in the memory.

"But the decision as to which readings to keep and which to discard is subjective, bringing us to the question of manipulation."

What is the GoingStick?

The GoingStick provides a scientifically-based measurement for the firmness of the ground and level of traction experienced by horses running over it during a race. It works to a scale of zero to 15, although the majority of readings will sit in and around the second third of that scale (five to ten).

As a guide, Monday’s meetings in Britain ranged from 5.8 on the GoingStick at Fakenham, described as good ground, to 10.1 at Redcar, called good to firm. However, it is worth noting that the GoingStick has different calibrations for Flat and jumps. Garratt added that clerks will insert the stick in parts of the track that will provide the results they are looking for.

• Chris Cook: All hail Hans Christian Sanderson - GoingStick saga is a disgrace that pushes racing into a world of fairytales 

He said: "They’ll avoid previously repaired divots, and possibly even areas of known variability – such as compacted, decompacted, wet or freshly drained areas – because any of these factors are likely to skew the score.

"At what point does the elimination of significant outliers in the data, an accepted practice in some strains of mathematical analysis, or the avoidance of particular data points, become deliberate refinement to achieve a cogent result?

"Having established that the GoingStick doesn’t necessarily do what it says on the tin, is it fair to slight Thirsk’s clerk for telling fairytales, or should we be thanking him for highlighting the truth?"

Bill Farnsworth: "It's in our interests to give an accurate report, so that we attract the right type of horses”Credit: John Grossick (racingpost.com/photos)

Bill Farnsworth, who oversees Musselburgh, echoed Garratt's views, and said: "Take a situation where we walk the track at 6.30am on the day declarations are made and we've had some overnight rain. You walk the track and think the ground has gone from good to firm to good but because the rain is sitting in the top as it's only just stopped raining, the GoingStick readings might come up with readings as good to soft, or soft.

"We know that if we have a dry forecast in 48 hours it won't be anywhere near soft, it might even go back to the fast side of good. Is it helpful if we call the going good for declarations alongside a GoingStick reading, which is soft when we know  it's probably going to be good or even faster on raceday? To me, that would confuse trainers and everyone else. So we try to get readings that more accurately reflects the going we want to communicate to trainers."

He stressed the intention is to provide accurate information and to avoid issuing misleading data.

"We try our best to give an accurate official going assessment, although we accept they are subjective,." he said. "Trainers get to know clerks and their racetracks and we believe that we are mostly in tune with each other. 

"The weather can make predicting the going difficult but we try our best. We don’t mind what the going is but we do mind if we don’t get the correct information to the trainers. If you don't tell it accurately, you'll soon get found out. You're on a hiding to nothing, like the boy who cried wolf.

"It's in our interests to give an accurate report, so that we attract the right type of horses. But the GoingStick can cause confusion and we try to get a reading that correlates with what we assess the going to be."

Farnsworth would rather that use of the GoingStick was optional, and said: "We have asked for the rule to change. We find it to be time consuming when we’d prefer to be focusing on preparing the track for the raceday and it prevents you looking at the track objectively when walking it.

"If you walk with the GoingStick randomly sticking it in the ground, it’s like driving on cruise control, letting the instruments do the work, which allows you to daydream and walking with a traditional stick is like rally driving in a manual car when you have your wits about you." 

The BHA said last week that it was aware of Sanderson's comments and was looking into them.

Read more:

'If we published the readings they would be misleading' - clerk defends decision to amend GoingStick reports before release 

NTF alarmed after clerk's 'inaccurate and condescending' comments on GoingStick readings 

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