There was a debacle at the Stony Creek race meeting on Sunday, where the track was originally rated a soft 5 but ended up finishing a heavy 10, after three track downgrades throughout the day.

The controversial downgrades have sparked a debate in the racing community, with Giddy Up host Gareth Hall, expert tipster David Gately and trainer Wayne Hawkes all agreeing that inconsistent track ratings are an issue which Australian racing needs to address.

“It's an interesting one, I don't know what the protocols that we need to be following there are,” Hall said on SENTrack & RSN’s Giddy Up.

“Whether the PRE’s need to change the way that they go about that in every state. Do they have an independent track walker that does that for most of the tracks? Whether that's viable or is it too expensive? I don't know.

“It's a little inconsistent at the moment. I think it's one of the biggest issues in racing at the moment.”

Gately followed Hall’s take up with his own opinion from a punting perspective, stating that he feels like punters are “running up a hill” at times.

“I think it's one of many things we need to get on top of,” Gately said.

“You feel like you’re running up a hill with a tsunami coming at you sometimes with the myriad of issues that punters are forced to face these days, and yet we want them (punters) to fund the industry for us.”

In fact, trainer Wayne Hawkes believes Australian racing should entirely move away from their current track rating system, as it is too confusing.

He believes that we should adopt a fast, good, yielding, slow and heavy rating system.

See the trainer’s take on the track conditions issue below:

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