Mothers and daughters driving success in racing

Lyn Tolson and Leonie Proctor 

Lyn Tolson wasn’t supposed to be a trainer. Growing up with ponies, she started riding trackwork at Mornington Racecourse at 17 – one of just three women doing so at the time. She rode up to 15 horses a morning, continuing the job for years while she raised two daughters, and still wasn’t particularly looking to take out a licence. What changed her mind was the frustration of being an owner without a voice.

“I had a horse with a trainer, and I said, ‘Oh, let’s go here, let’s do this,’ but I didn’t sort of get much say in it. And I thought, I want to try it myself. So that’s how it started.”

Lyn began as an owner-trainer with one horse, had four winners in her first eight months, and quickly applied for her open licence. Offers from other owners followed, and there was no looking back.

Her daughter Leonie was never meant to follow her into thoroughbreds. Lyn had her pegged as the dressage rider: “She was a pony girl. She was five foot nothing and had no interest in the big horses.” Then Leonie went to work for trainer Tony Noonan, started travelling with horses to Queensland, Sydney and Adelaide, and watched them win races she’d helped prepare.

“I just got the bug, I suppose,” Leonie says. When she went out on her own and began training from the same property as Lyn, a formal partnership became the obvious next step. That was over two decades ago.

Today, Leonie, who turns 50 in June, handles the horses on the ground – she still rides trackwork herself every morning. Lyn, 72, (who might occasionally get up on a horse for a gentle walk in the water) manages the owners and has a sharp eye for breeding. When it comes to buying horses, their skills divide neatly: Lyn studies the bloodlines, and Leonie looks at how they’ve raced. Together, they’ve found horses that others have overlooked.

None more so than Curran, an unraced gelding they bought for $600 at an online auction in 2020 on a tip from trainer Ciaron Maher and endorsement from Leonie’s son Matthew, who had ridden him in trackwork. He went on to earn more than $867,000 in prizemoney. Now retired, Leonie has started doing dressage with him with a view to competing in Off The Track events. “He’s enjoying it,” she says. “And I just love riding him.”

Their current star is Pop Award, a five-year-old mare who won at Flemington on Australian Cup Day in March, with Leonie’s other son, Luke, aboard. 

It’s a family affair in every sense: Luke and his brother Matthew are both jockeys who regularly ride in the stable’s colours, Leonie’s partner works on the property, and Lyn’s other daughter Adele, also holds a trainer’s licence. 

As for the mother/daughter dynamic when working together? They “bounce off each other”, resolve their occasional disagreements quickly, and share a quiet ambition that suits them both. “Mum and I, we’re not ones for much attention, and are happy just to cruise along and do our job,” Leonie says. It’s a process that seems to work, with jockey Damian Lane once telling the boys: “Your mum and your Nan, they’ve always got one coming through.” That, really, is all the spotlight they need.

Emma-Lee, Chloe, Lucy & Annabelle Browne 

Emma-Lee Browne came to racing through her father, Jeff, an Olympic-level showjumper and trainer, and her mother, also involved in the industry. By 14, she was riding trackwork. By 21, she held a trainer’s licence and had celebrated her first official win in a Group 2. Her career took her across New Zealand and Singapore before she and her husband, David, settled in Victoria, where they’ve built a growing stable at Pakenham.

Now the team includes their three daughters – Chloe, 20, Lucy, 18, and Annabelle, 11 – each finding their own place in the family operation. Chloe is up before dawn for trackwork and straps horses on race day. Lucy, horse-mad since she was 12, is working towards the apprentice jockey program. Annabelle, at 11, has already won the Balnarring pony races three years running and shows every sign of following suit.

“The horses are all sort of part of our family. It’s just an extension of our family life, every day having to look after them. But because you enjoy it, you keep doing it.”

The family dynamic is easy and warm. “We all work together as a team,” says Chloe. “But Mum’s the big boss.” No one disagrees. When asked what she most admires about her mother, Chloe doesn’t hesitate: “Her leadership. She knows what she wants and just goes for it.” Annabelle’s answer is simple: “My mum’s wonderful, and I want to be like her.”

For Emma-Lee, the philosophy that guides her training is the same one that guides her family: put happiness first and everything else follows. “The competitive side comes once the horses are happy,” she says. “If the horses are not happy, they don’t perform.”

A recent highlight for the family has been Basilinna – a filly they bred themselves, out of a mare David bought for $500 to lift Emma-Lee’s spirits after losing a beloved jumper. That gesture earned them a golden ticket to last year’s Lexus Melbourne Cup, and while Basilinna unfortunately didn’t make it to the starter’s gate, it was still “a dream scenario” for the family. 

This week, the whole family has descended on Warrnambool for the May Carnival – Emma-Lee and the girls with the first runners, David following with the next lot, Lucy arriving on Thursday. “The biggest disadvantage of having a family business is that you can’t all go away together,” Emma-Lee admits, “because someone always has to stay home and look after things. But little trips to Warrnambool Carnival together – that’s a bit of fun.”