Peter V’Landys leaves Racing NSW after 22 years

Cover image courtesy of Racing NSW

After more than two decades at Racing NSW, Peter V’Landys will leave the chief executive’s office on November 30 with a record few Australian sporting administrators could match for scale, longevity, or sheer volume of change.

Racing NSW announced his departure on Thursday morning, bringing an end to a 22-year tenure that delivered vast new revenues, sharply higher prizemoney, and races that reshaped Sydney’s spring.

It was also a period marked by major disputes with other racing jurisdictions, clubs, and sections of the industry, several of which remain unresolved as he prepares to leave.

V’Landys is currently on leave from Racing NSW while focusing on rugby league and is expected to become the NRL’s first executive chairman. Racing NSW chief operating officer Graeme Hinton has been acting chief executive in his absence.

“Naturally, this is a very sad day for me. I have put my heart and soul into racing for 22 years,” V’Landys said in Racing NSW’s announcement.

He credited the organisation’s staff and boards, saying Racing NSW had gone from “a struggling jurisdiction to a world-leading jurisdiction”.

Racing NSW said initiatives introduced during his tenure had secured $3.5 billion in new funding and $375 million in recurring annual revenue.

A wide record

There will be no shortage of assessments of the V’Landys era, likely to be retold in books in the future.

Chris Waller was emphatic in his praise, telling The Sydney Morning Herald: “He will go down as one of the best, if not the best, sporting administrators in Australian history.”

Waller, who said he had initially been sceptical of V’Landys’s promises, also credited him with following through on them.

Gillon McLachlan, the Tabcorp chief executive and former AFL boss, focused on the characteristics behind those results.

“Peter is who he is because he’s a winner. He wins because he is relentless, tough,” McLachlan told media on Thursday.

Those descriptions go some way towards explaining the V’Landys years.

Racing NSW repeatedly pursued ambitious commercial and policy positions and was prepared to fight for them when challenged. Sometimes the fight went all the way to the High Court.

Perhaps the most consequential example was race-fields legislation, which required wagering operators to pay for the use of NSW racing information. Racing NSW successfully defended the scheme in the High Court in 2012, establishing a major new revenue source for the industry.

During the Equine Influenza crisis, V’Landys was also central to securing financial assistance for participants when racing was effectively shut down. Racing NSW now puts the federal assistance secured during that period at $230 million.

The sale of Trackside to Tabcorp helped fund the redevelopment of Randwick, while wagering tax reform delivered further recurring revenue.

Then came the pop-up races.

The Everest, introduced in 2017, became the centrepiece of Sydney’s spring and was eventually granted Group 1 status. The Golden Eagle added another high-value feature and gave Racing NSW another powerful programming asset in a part of the calendar traditionally dominated by Melbourne. It runs as a Group 1 in 2026 for the first time.

Prizemoney grew enormously over the same period. Racing NSW says Saturday metropolitan prizemoney has risen from $45,000 a race in 2004 to $160,000 today, while minimum country TAB prizemoney rose from $5,000 to $27,000.

Monies collected for equine welfare also increased. Racing NSW now takes 1.5% of prizemoney for welfare initiatives, and use this to purchase properties used for retired Thoroughbreds and created Equimillion, its $1 million competition for former racehorses.

Success, and friction

The willingness to push hard for NSW has periodically put Racing NSW at odds with other jurisdictions.

Arguments over race programming and the Australian Pattern intensified during V’Landys’s tenure, particularly as Sydney introduced lucrative races outside the traditional black-type structure and sought recognition for them.

The long-running difficulties surrounding Australia’s Pattern system eventually resulted in responsibility for Australian black-type changes moving to the Asian Pattern Committee. There have also been increasingly public disagreements within NSW.

Gai Waterhouse, who campaigned against the proposed sale of Rosehill Gardens, offered a different assessment of Racing NSW’s spending priorities on Thursday.

“They've been shockingly neglected over the tenure of Mr V'landys,” she told ABC News of regional racecourses.

Waterhouse said investment should now be directed towards tracks and spectator facilities, before adding of V’Landys’s departure: “So let's move on now.”

Infrastructure will be one of the areas left for his successor to deal with.

Some major projects remain unfinished, including works being delivered through Racing for the Regions. The program was developed by Racing NSW to upgrade regional racecourses, with the NSW Government committing $58.6 million towards 14 projects.

An April report from the NSW Auditor-General found that, as of January this year, six had been completed, four were under construction and four had yet to start construction. The program may will be substantially closer to completion by the time V’Landys formally departs, but its original timetable - with a projected completion date in 2024 - has long since passed.

More immediate is the position of the Australian Turf Club.

The relationship between Racing NSW and its largest race club deteriorated significantly following the proposed sale of Rosehill Gardens and subsequent disputes about the ATC’s finances and governance.

Racing NSW issued the club with a show-cause notice and sought to appoint an administrator. The ATC challenged Racing NSW’s power to do so, initially succeeding before Racing NSW won on appeal.

Morgan Kelly of Ernst & Young subsequently took control of the club as administrator.

Whoever succeeds V’Landys will inherit responsibility for Racing NSW’s relationship with an ATC that remains under administration, as well as the broader question of what comes next for the club.

V’Landys will also leave Racing NSW while his personal defamation proceeding against this publication, The Thoroughbred Report, remains before the NSW Supreme Court.

Who comes next?

For Racing NSW, the immediate question is who occupies the chief executive’s office after November 30.

Hinton has spent more than 13 years at Racing NSW and is acting in the position, but there has been no public announcement setting out how the permanent appointment will be made.

The timing is complicated by another unfinished piece of business: Brad Hazzard’s review of the Thoroughbred Racing Act 1996.

The review was asked to examine whether the legislation remains appropriate, including governance structures, Racing NSW board appointment requirements and tenure, transparency, stakeholder consultation and the sustainability of the industry.

Hazzard delivered his report to government in late July, but it has not been released.

Racing Minister David Harris told Budget Estimates in August that the report was before Cabinet and therefore remained confidential during that process. He said it would be released once that process had concluded, but did not provide a date. The NSW Government’s published terms of reference confirm that governance structures, appointment requirements and tenure limits for Racing NSW board members fall within the review.

That has prompted calls for the report to be released before Racing NSW appoints V’Landys’s permanent successor.

The Racing Reform Group NSW said on Thursday that the recruitment process should wait until there was greater clarity about the organisation’s future structure and the responsibilities of its chief executive.

“The process for finding the next permanent CEO of Racing NSW should not begin until there is clarity around what the responsibilities for that role will be,” the group said.

The RRG's point centres on a factual issue the board will have to contend with: the legislation governing Racing NSW has just undergone a substantial government review, and neither the organisation nor potential candidates yet know publicly what changes Hazzard has recommended.

The RRG also called for the Racing NSW board to be refreshed and said a “proper and consultative process” should determine the organisation’s future direction.

TTR asked Racing NSW chair Dr Saranne Cooke whether the board intended to appoint a permanent CEO before the Hazzard Report was released, and whether she would seek publication of the report before that process proceeded.

No response had been received at the time of publication.

After 22 years

There is an understandable temptation, when someone has occupied a position for 22 years, to reduce the departure to either a celebration or an indictment.

V’Landys’s Racing NSW record does not fit particularly comfortably into either.

The revenues are real, as are the prizemoney increases, The Everest, the Golden Eagle, and substantial investments made during his tenure.

So too are the disagreements and unresolved issues that his successor will inherit.

Perhaps McLachlan’s description of V’Landys as “relentless” is the simplest explanation for both sides of that record.

For more than two decades, Racing NSW rarely stood still. From December, someone else gets to decide where it goes next.

Table: Racing Australia Factbook metrics for Racing NSW during V'Landys's tenure, note that 2025/26 data has yet to be released