NSW Racing supremo Peter V’landys tried to push Victoria and Queensland off the sport’s peak national body for supporting rule changes designed to reduce the number of times jockeys whip their horse.
The Racing Australia boardroom power play, confirmed by documents lodged in the NSW Supreme Court, reveals the extent to which the protracted stand-off between NSW and other states is affecting the public image of the sport.
Australia has some of the most permissive whip rules in international racing.Credit:Justin McManus
Racing Victoria chief executive Andrew Jones, who joined the organisation after the whips imbroglio, said the dispute was nonsensical.
“I don’t understand it at all,” he told The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. “I would have thought we would want to be working together on whip reform as an industry.
“I don’t understand blocking that, and I doubly don’t understand using that as a pretence to exclude Racing Victoria from Racing Australia. That is just crazy to me.”
V’landys described rule changes to limit whip use as “superfluous and window dressing”, citing Victoria Racing’s previous public comments that padded whips don’t hurt horses.
He said Racing NSW had no choice but to take Victoria and Queensland’s departure from nationally agreed whip rules up with Racing Australia.
“Racing NSW has not attempted to exclude Racing Victoria, Greg Nichols nor Racing Queensland and its representatives,” he said. “What Racing NSW has done is, as a matter of principle, raised its concerns when those jurisdictions, unable to get their way at the meetings of Racing Australia, have attempted to get around the constitution of Racing Australia and the Australian Rules of Racing.
“In the circumstances, it was quite proper of Racing NSW to raise these matters given those serious consequences.”
The Racing NSW arguments were not accepted by Racing Australia.
Racing Victoria chief executive Andrew Jones.Credit:Daniel Munoz
The tension between V’landys and Racing Victoria over whips started cracking back in late 2020, when then RV chief executive Giles Thompson flagged his support for Australia to follow an international trend towards whip-free racing and announced a trial of more restrictive whip rules at a series of country races in Victoria.
Under the agreed rules of Racing Australia, jockeys can whip their horses five times in the early stages of a race and an unlimited number of times in the final 100m. Under the rules trialled at the Victorian country races, jockeys were permitted to whip their horses five times for the entire race. In announcing the trial, Racing Victoria general manager Greg Carpenter said whip reform was essential for the sport to retain its audience. The trial ended in February 2021.
A week after one of the trial races was run in early 2021, V’landys wrote to Thompson warning that by implementing a state-based rule incompatible with the Australian Rules of Racing, Racing Victoria and its board representative Greg Nichols, then RA chairman, had lost their entitlement to sit on the industry’s national governing body.
“It appears to Racing NSW that Racing Victoria’s actions as set out above have resulted in Racing Victoria no longer being a PRA (principal racing authority) for purposes of the Rules of Racing and Mr Greg Nichols no longer being appointed member or director of Racing Australia,” V’landys wrote.
Racing NSW chief executive Peter V’landys.Credit:Tim Bauer
A sequel was played out between NSW and Queensland, when Racing NSW objected to Queensland’s intention to enforce more restrictive whip rules at its winter carnival.
Racing Queensland outgoing chief executive Brendan Parnell declined to discuss the episode, which he said was subject to board confidentiality, but described whip reform as “absolutely critical” to preserve the social license of racing in Australia, where jockeys whip horses more freely than in Britain, the US and some European jurisdictions.
Racing NSW this year initiated legal action against the other states in a bid to obtain documents connected to what it suspects was a conspiracy to exclude it from the national affairs of Australia’s $9.5 billion thoroughbred industry.
The board machinations surrounding the use of whips is outlined in an affidavit submitted to the court by Timothy Price, a lawyer for Racing NSW. The affidavit also details the extent to which a decision taken by Victoria in 2018 to block the elevation of Racing NSW’s spring feature race, The Everest, poisoned relations between the two biggest racing states.
