Queensland racing industry mourns loss of Garry Newham

By Jordan Gerrans

An absolute gentleman and old-school horseman.

That is how multiple Group 1-winning trainer Garry Newham is being remembered after his death on Friday on the Gold Coast following a short battle with illness.

The racing game took Newham and the gallopers he prepared around the globe.

The long-time Gold Coast-based conditioner will be best remembered for the deeds of champion horse Starcraft, while in more recent years, Winning Ways handed Newham the Group 1 Queensland Oaks title in 2019.

The stalwart of the industry trained on the Gold Coast for several decades as well as spending a period of time working over the ditch in New Zealand.

The five-time Group 1 champion trainer was still poking around with one horse until just a few weeks before his passing.

A mare named Lyndall was Newham’s final starter in a race, going around on the Gold Coast Polytrack in the first week of March.

“Garry was an integral and long-term part of the Gold Coast Turf Club,”  Gold Coast Turf Club chairman Brett Cook said.

“He was a gentleman and no one had a bad word to say about him. He will be sadly missed.”

The Gold Coast was where Newham based his team and that is where he mostly raced them.

And, usually on board a Newham-trained galloper was his former apprentice Justin Stanley.

Stanley rode for Newham more than any jockey in his career and while they had a strong working relationship, it went further than an apprentice-and-master dynamic  between the two.

Stanley – now a leading provincial rider in the Sunshine State – finished the last two years of his apprenticeship under Newham’s guidance.

Reflecting on his late boss’ life on Monday morning, Stanley remembers him always smiling and laughing during his days when he worked for the former Gold Coast trainer.

“You could not have asked for a better boss as an apprentice,” Stanley said.

“He was tough but fair. If you did the work then you got the results.

“He put me on everything from day one and always had time for anyone if they needed to talk – not just me as his apprentice – but anyone.

“He would always offer advice or a hand, he was a true gentleman of racing.

“I do not think I ever heard anyone say a bad word about him and I do not think I ever heard him say a bad word about anyone either.”

When Stanley suffered a serious injury earlier in his career and was battling back, it was a phone call from his former boss that lifted him back to the top of his game.

Newham implored him to head over to New Zealand and help him in his new pursuit.

Stanley spent around a year across the ditch helping Newham before they both eventually returned to Australia.

While the 42-year-old Stanley was struggling to get back into consistent race riding back then, he is now considered one of the top riders at provincial level in the state.

Newham never had a huge team of horses in work – Stanley recalls him having 15 or so at one stage – but he achieved outstanding results with those small numbers.

It was also a small operation in terms of staff as well, with Newham assisted by his apprentice Stanley and his wife Petra.

“He was a very good trainer and was always hands on,” Stanley said.

“He was a very good horseman – he could put a shoe on, he could break them in and he could do their teeth. 

“He was an old school horseman.

“I spent a lot of time with him as an apprentice and I was still pretty close with him over the years. I always caught him with him.”

Newham’s stable star was Starcraft who was inducted into the Racing Queensland Hall of Fame in 2022.

Stanley rode Starcraft in the horses first few stars before he rose to fame.

Urged by the riding of legendary Sunshine State hoop Glen Boss, Starcraft claimed the 2004 Chipping Norton Stakes before winning another Group 1 – the AJC Derby – later that year.

Starcraft went on to win the Group 1 Mudgway Stakes in New Zealand later in 2004. 

Starcraft eventually ended up under the care of revered European trainer Luca Cumani, who won Group 1s in France and England with him.

In more recent times, Winning Ways put the Newham stable up in lights.

Winning Ways was crowned Horse of the Year at the Queensland Thoroughbred Awards in 2019.
She was Queensland’s sole Group 1 winner in the 2018-19 campaign and Winning Ways was also named the Three-Year-Old Horse of the Year.

During the voting period, Winning Ways prevailed in the Group 1 Queensland Oaks and the Group 3 Gold Coast Bracelet to be the Sunshine State’s flag bearer during the winter racing carnival.

“He was an absolute gentleman,” Cook said of Newham.

“For him to be in the industry for as long as he has and no one I have ever met has had a bad word to say about him, that shows the quality of the man he was.

“Everyone just loved him, he was just so nice to everyone.”

The Gold Coast Turf Club will host Newham’s wake at a yet to be determined date.

Racing Queensland extends its condolences to the Newham family.