Mrs Browne’s lasting legacy in jumps racing

[Wandering Eyes]

Ann Browne, widely known as Mrs Browne, is a trailblazer and heroine in New Zealand racing, and would be the first to share her passion for jumpers.  

As Ann Fraser, Browne spent her early years living on a farm off the East Coast of the North Island where her horse-oriented family felt anything but isolated.

“All of my relations are from Gisborne and I grew up on a farm inland from Tikitiki, off the East Coast,” Browne said. “I lived there until I was 14, until my father bought a farm in Tirau, and we shifted to the Waikato in 1953.

“Living on a farm, we didn’t have tractors or anything like that, so you had to have horses. We had pack horses to cart fencing gear, and we’d go to shows and sports meetings, all of the little towns on the East Coast had them.

“I did correspondence school for most of my life, right up until high school, and I did one year in Gisborne and two years in Hamilton. Because we had the sports meetings, and we’d go socialise and play tennis at our friend’s houses, it was an easy transition from correspondence.

“My mother was always interested in racing and my step-grandfather was A.B Williams, he owned a lot of racehorses. Some of those were Star Stranger, Gasbag, and Bandmaster, who won the Grand National Steeplechase.

“My Dad’s father was Tom Fraser, he owned a horse called Hunting Crime, he was a very good horse in the 1930’s that won the Railway and the Great Northern Derby.”

That family involvement would spark Browne’s interest in the industry, but it wasn’t until she met her soon-to-be husband, Ken Browne, that a life in racing would become a reality.

“Kenny knew who I was because my aunty lived near the boundary of his farm and we just got to talking at a hunt one day,” Browne said. “We got married when I was 20, had two kids by the time I was 22, and I was back riding in a couple of weeks after having Roger, our youngest.

“We didn’t have many racehorses to start with and we went overseas with polo a few times, but as we got a bit older, we got a few more and it grew from there.”

Browne recalled that a number of the earlier horses were gifted, or purchased cheaply, including Choc Wallace, a horse she fondly remembers.

“Kenny started with one or two horses that were given to him to try for various reasons,” she said.

“I had a half Clydesdale horse that I sold to Japan for $800, and the owner of Choc Wallace was hoping to sell him to the Japanese as well. We offered to buy him and ended up paying $230, and he won a lot more than that.

“He won the Waikato Hunt Cup, while it was run in October, and a couple of weeks later, he won the big round the ring jump at the Waikato Show. He would do the shows in the summer, and racing in the winter, and he won 11 races.”

While they enjoyed success with a number of the ‘second-hand’ horses, the Brownes decided to invest in their future with young stock purchased from the sales.

“After a while, we decided to go to the sales and buy yearlings instead,” she said. “We wouldn’t pay a lot for them, but Kenny and I worked in unison, I’d be outside looking at the horses and letting him know which were possibly suitable, and he would do the bidding.

“We didn’t care how little they cost, the horses didn’t know how much we bought them for and we had a good success rate. A number of them won good flat races, and we taught the whole lot how to jump right from the beginning.”

The Brownes were able to educate their horses from their property out of Cambridge, with a hill-based training style that would continue to produce champion jumpers and plenty of talented flat gallopers as well.

“I learned a lot from reading and Kenny was a great do-it-yourselfer,” Browne said. “Between the two of us, we would be able to bring together ideas and establish our way of doing things.

“We used to go into the track at Cambridge to gallop the horses, but by the time we would get the truck ready, take the horses in, work two or three and then take them home, it was lunch time.

“We bought a bit more land around the neighbouring properties, and decided we were able to work the horses entirely at home. We gradually changed things and figured out how to use the farm to our advantage, and we won a lot of races using that system.

“The horses absolutely loved working up the hill, they never got sour. They got up there and they could see for miles, it was a natural way of training.

“We had a set up with logs and jumps, and we taught horses to jump right from the start. Some of them never ended up jumping, but they all did it. Horses could be good jumpers, but they might never win a jumping race, because they just couldn’t see that distance out.

“We had horses with over 100 starts, and they were just happy horses living that lifestyle. A lot of the horses would relax here as well, if they came and were a bit go-ey, they tended to settle down.

“A lot of the horses would retire here, we were lucky with the acres we had, we would look after them for the rest of their lives. On our schooling days, some of the retired horses would come in, so that the budding jumping riders could have a turn on an experienced horse.”

The Brownes dominated the New Zealand jumping scene for over 40 years, with Ken initially training the horses under his own name before Ann joined the official partnership in 1983. Often with Kenny in the saddle, they won every feature race on offer, and it was the Great Northern Steeplechase at Ellerslie where they were a formidable force.

Ken’s first triumphs as a trainer, owner and jockey came in 1977 and 1979 with Ascona, and Ann got her name on the trophy for the first time in 1990 with Ardri. Over the next 10 years, they won the Northern another five times, with the most memorable coming in 2001 with a dead-heat between their horse, Smart Hunter, and Kevin O’Connor’s Sir Avion.

Not long before the iconic meeting, Ken had sustained a serious injury when falling off a horse at home, leaving him a quadriplegic, and he was still in hospital when Smart Hunter won the Great Northern Hurdles two days prior.

“It wasn’t long after Kenny was hurt, so he was still in the hospital, but he’d planned to start Smart Hunter in both races,” Browne said. “Knowing that, I went through with the plan, and to end up in a dead heat in the steeplechase, it was just amazing.

“I still enjoy watching that race to this day, and Smart Hunter was a beautiful horse to do anything with, I used to take him on treks as well.

“We seemed to keep finding horses that could really do it, and we were fortunate to have very good riders on them.”

In 2004, Wanderlust would deliver the Brownes’ final Northern victory prior to Ken’s passing in 2006, but Ann would continue their legacy, adding another three crowns to the mantelpiece, with Fair King (2009), Ima Heroine (2011) and Tom’s Myth (2012), with the latter becoming the first horse to win a Wellington Steeplechase, Pakuranga Hunt Cup and Northern in the same season.

Fair King and Ima Heroine were two of a select number of horses bred by the Brownes, with Kenny’s background in polo influencing them to pursue breeding on a small scale.

That journey began after a picnic meeting in Taihape, where Kenny rode a mare called Miss Luca, who had the size for polo and the bloodlines for producing jumpers, as proven through her progeny.

“Kenny rode Miss Luca in a picnic meeting and he was able to get her as a polo pony, but she was a full-sister to a horse that won the Pakuranga Hunt Cup,” Browne said. “She had a foal with our polo pony stallion, Mokowai, and then had a couple of foals by North Pole.

“North Pole came from England, he was a nice horse with good breeding, and he’d won flat and hurdle races over there. He didn’t have many foals, but he was a useful stallion because we weren’t doing it in a big way.

“One of those, out of Miss Luca, was Pulka, who won three steeplechases before we sent her to Paul Nelson and he bred some horses from her. One of Pulka’s foals was Ima Hunter, who Paul gave to us because she kept getting ryegrass staggers.

“She would become the dam of Ima Heroine, who won the Great Northern Steeplechase, and the next generation is Ima Wonder, who won the Pakuranga Hunt Cup last year.

“After North Pole, we didn’t want to do the stallions ourselves, but we’ve bred a few with other stallions, and nearer the end, we got Heroicity, and he ended up in America.”

While Ken guided their horses to many victories over the years, Ann made her own mark in the saddle, becoming the first female amateur to ride in a race, and later, she became the first to ride a winner.

Some four decades have passed since that first outing, but she remembers an encounter prior to the start vividly.

“I was the first female amateur to ride in a tote flat race, on a horse called Stipulation,” she said. “I became a grandmother three days before that race, because David (Browne), my grandson who now lives in Australia, was born.

“I remember we were in the starting stalls, and the man next to me said, ‘now that girls are allowed to ride in this race, it’s time for me to give up’. I asked him if it was really so bad, but off we went, and now most of the riders are females, both professionally and in the amateurs.

“I kept riding in them for a while, I won four races and I rode in the point to points and ladies steeplechases as well. When I was going out with Kenny, he let me have a horse called Funds, who I kept up at my Dad’s place and I won most of the time riding him.

“He did a bit of everything, I’d also take him to the shows and even went chasing wild Kaimanawas. We did a lot of different things, and eventually I sold him to Ken Kelso, he was about 16 or 17 and a very good showjumping rider.

“Kenny wasn’t much into going to the shows, because there was a lot of hanging around and you didn’t know when you’d have your class, but at the races, everything would run to time. But girls weren’t allowed to ride in the races, and they didn’t care about that at the shows, so I did a lot of show jumping.”

Despite not being able to ply her trade on the track to a larger degree, Browne got enough satisfaction from working the horses at home, going to the races, and balancing the administration for both their farm and racing ventures.

“I liked riding certain horses a lot, I got pleasure out of working them,” she said.

“Crown Star is the one everyone remembers, he was a fairly cheap buy and he cut his hoof really badly before he was broken in, but we got that healed up, and he ended up being such a good horse.

“Some of my favourite horses are those that people would’ve hardly heard of, one was called Bencathra, he was just a lovely horse, as was Norfolk Boy, he was quite a good racehorse too. I just loved riding them, they didn’t have to be the best or fastest horses.

“I kept all the records, right from about 1963, of each horse, each race, and who rode them. I was the accountant as well, paid the bills and organised the stud sheep and cattle.

“I led the horses around at the races, Kenny would ride them, and if we had more than one, we’d have other people riding them, all friends of ours. That’s just the way that jumping worked, you’re rivals and friends, and if you can’t win, you hope they can.

“I was always proud of the way our horses looked at the races, but they were never stabled, they lived out in the paddock with two or three other horses. They’d often be covered in mud on the morning of the races, so we’d clean them all up and they were always presented well.”

Browne maintained the same standard of presentation and performance with her horses right up to her retirement from training in 2018, with 626 domestic winners to her name, and 43 of those at stakes level.

“It was an easy decision because my knee was getting a bit sore, so I wasn’t able to ride anymore,” she said. “I’d gone through life without getting any concussions, or major broken bones, so I wanted to keep it that way.

“I just had one or two horses, which meant I’d have to get someone out to just ride those couple of horses, or go into the track. I didn’t want to get up at five o’clock in the morning, so I decided to let someone else train them.

“I’ve only got Ima Wonder and Brother Max, and 10 percent of two other horses at the Brosnans. It’s good fun, I enjoy having the horses.

“I can talk to Peter (Brosnan) about all sorts of things and I’m friends with Jess (Brosnan) and Tarissa McDonald as well, the horses are in good hands.”

Aside from her horses, the Brownes influence on New Zealand jumps racing lives on in a unique form, with the line of picturesque live hedges through the centre of the course at Te Rapa introduced by the couple.

“We went to England and Kenny rode in a race at Sandown, where they had a lot of jumps down the back straight,” Browne said. “He thought they would look really good in the straight at Te Rapa, so we planted these bamboo jumps, and they’re still there today.

“Myself, Kenny and Brian Timms were the first people to jump those jumps, we schooled a couple of ours over them.

“They’re there and they don’t take a lot of effort to get ready, the course caretaker can just trim them up and they’re ready to go. The horses seem to jump them well too.

“The same was then done at Ellerslie, Paeroa, Te Aroha, Rotorua, Te Awamutu and Matamata, but unfortunately now there is just Te Aroha and Te Rapa.”

Browne will scarcely miss a meeting at the Waikato venues, with a passion for horses and jumping that has kept her full of life, right from the start.

“If there are races around here, I’ll be there, particularly at Te Rapa,” she said. “I’m not big on travelling during the winter-time because I like to know I’m going to a nice warm motel, I feel the cold a bit now.

“I enjoy watching the races on the TV, I watch races in France and England, and I watch the good overseas show jumping on YouTube and a bit of eventing too.

“I tell people I’ve never been bored in my life, even when I lived in the back blocks of Tikitiki, I never got bored.

“I’ve always had the horses.”

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