It doesn't matter if you're weighing up the form for a Blue Riband event such as jumps racing's Cheltenham Gold Cup, or a lowly amateur riders' race on the flat at Carlisle - the next time you try to make some cash by wading through the stats to pick the winner of a horse race, there's one question you must ask before handing over any of your hard earned moola to a bookie. That is: will my selection act on the 'going' it's due to encounter in this race?

The response to this query is more fundamental to deciding the outcome of the race than any other morsel of data you'll need to weigh up.