When Mark Newnham opened the first catalogue for the 2017 sale season he had absolute clarity on what type of yearlings he wanted for his nascent stable.
Newnham had opened a stable at Warwick Farm with some fanfare in April of last year, but it wasn't until the start of 2017 when the former right-hand man to Gai Waterhouse could properly source stock himself.
And with that, he set about acquiring yearlings strictly in the mould of two-year-olds.
"By the time I got my trainer's licence last year we were at the back end of the sale season," Newnham said.
"Whereas this year I was able to be active at all the sales and I'd been training for a while so people were more prepared to send me horses.
"I did go with the mindset of buying two-year-old types because it was important for my business to get up and running so this current crop is my first lot of babies I was able to go out and source myself.
"I could have waited and bought some late-maturing types but it wasn't going to help me get any exposure. The only thing that was going to help the business grow was to have runners.
"When I started out I was given a couple of older horses and they did a really good job to keep my name out there – but now most of my stable is young horses."
In his first 18 months of training, Newnham has enjoyed remarkable success including a Golden Slipper runner – Diamond Tathagata (image Steve Hart) , but said the circumstances in which he left Tulloch Lodge made for a challenging start to his independent training career.
"I'd say it probably takes three years to establish a stable from scratch and when I started 18 months ago I didn't have a lot of time to prepare with all the changes that were happening at Gai's," Newnham said.
"I had to make a decision whether I was part of that or not and I decided to go my own way, but I didn't have any preparation going into it so it all had to be put together quite quickly.
"So far it's fortunately turned out very well, but a little bit more planning probably would have helped."
After finishing third with Pierro juvenile Canyonero in Saturday's $500,000 Inglis Nursery (1000m) at Randwick, Newnham is hoping the Gold Coast's Magic Millions raceday will provide the landmark result he is striving towards.
The horse in question is in fact not a two-year-old but a three-year-old named Super Ex, a promising colt that lays claim to the 1300m track record at Randwick and resumed with a sound fifth behind Whypeeo in the Listed Gold Edition Plate (1200m) at Doomben last Saturday.
"He was against race fit horses on a Doomben track with the rail out 4m – it was always going to be a hard task from where he was drawn first-up," Newnham said.
"He will be greatly improved by the run – last preparation he got better with each run and I'd expect the same this time in.
"He'll go to the Vo Rogue Plate on December 30 and then I'm planning to have him at his peak for the Magic Millions 3YO Guineas.
"The Magic Millions has great exposure. It has all your buyers and sellers present and it's all pretty much within the one complex with the races across the road from the sales ring.
"So to have a live chance there and a horse that hopefully can win the Guineas it's as good an advertisement as you can get.
"You win that race and all of a sudden you're at the front of people's minds. Talk will get you so far in this game, you need results."
Super Ex is currently a $15 chance inSportsbet's early market on the Magic Millions 3YO Guineas.
