going-stick.

​No once can accuse me of being someone who knows not what compromise look like. Yesterday I spelled it Going Stick, even though in the Racing Post it was spelled GoingStick. I do not like GoingStick as not only does it look wrong on the page, my view backed-up by the in-house dictionary, but also because it looks ugly on the page. Perhaps if it were spelled Goingstick, I could learn to get along with it. But not with that capital S sticking up in the air as if a rogue branch on a yew hedge in need of a trimmer. GoingStick is the linguistic equivalent of Boris Johnson’s hair. So, I will hyphenate the word – Going-Stick.
That controversy dealt with, let us go on to Sanderson-gate. James Sanderson, clerk of the course at Thirsk, has stirred-up a hornets’ nest of trouble upon himself by admitting he juggles with the numbers on his own, and seemingly despised, Going-Stick. People within the sport are wagging their fingers in the direction of Thirsk racecourse, with some even suggesting that Sanderson should be put on the naughty step for preferring to use his own judgement than be hamstrung by a device he has small faith in. 
As I said before, before being yesterday if my memory serves me well, you can ask jockeys at the finish of a race to describe the state of the ground and receive three different answers, so why anyone should believe the numbers given by the Going-Stick be considered sacrosanct is beyond my limited intelligence.
Even if the Going-Stick is 100% dependable, the ground yesterday may well be different to the ground come off-time for the first race and two trainers with two horses in a race, both of whom declared on the soft-ground both horses needed, might have different opinions on whether the going is truly soft or only good-to-soft, with one choosing to run, while the other trainer taking his or her horse out on the apparently legitimate grounds of the ground being wrong for his or her horse.
As I said before (yesterday?) the B.H.A. should conduct research into the matter to determine whether the Going-Stick or a clerk-of-the-course is better at describing ground conditions. Also, is there a third option. I suggest there is. There is always a need to find outlets for retired racehorses. How about using a local jockey to come and ride a retired but fit racehorse around the racecourse and use his or her opinion on how the ground is riding? It is often said by jockeys that a course will ride softer or firmer than it walks, so perhaps using horse and jockey - even the jockey could be retired – as a determining factor. We might have in the Racing Post going description thus: Going-Stick 8.00. Clerk-of-the-course, On the Slow side of Good. Retired Jockey and Horse, ‘definitely good-to-soft, but firmer in back-straight’.
All in all, given trainers can take a horse out for any old reason these days without invoking the ire of the stewards, I think this controversy is more a mole-hill than a mountain. We all suspect James Sanderson is only speaking the truth when he claims 50% of clerks meddle with the Going-Stick numbers and even when it provides an accurate description of the ground, I will guarantee that come the actual racing there will be a dozen jockeys and trainers with the opinion that the going description is wildly wrong.
It is a subjective dispute. If an owner was overly bullish prior to a race that his horse was a certainty and it gets beat, the easiest excuse or explanation by the jockey or the trainer was that the ground was not what they were expecting and that the clerk-of-the-course needs to be put in front of a wall and shot so severely that he/she gives up clerking and takes up a less demanding yet more respectable career. 
Whereas no trainer or jockey claims to want to be a starter, even though we all recognise that starters are at present making a right bollocks of starts, clerks-of-the-courses do their job while at the whim of the weather gods. If they water, they are criticised from Easter to Christmas when the racecourse receives a deluge of rain and are equally scolded when they do not water as a storm was forecast and instead the sun beats down accompanied by a breeze blown in from the South of France, which not only intrigues weather-forecasters but excites meteorologists. Yet nobody blames the Going-Stick.