Tommy Smith dominated Sydney racing for over three decades, winning the Sydney Trainers' Premiership every year between 1953 and 1985.

Born in Jembaicumbene, New South Wales (near Braidwood, New South Wales) and raised at the small town of Goolgowi in the Riverina district of New South Wales, young TOMMY ‘T.J’ SMITH worked with his father driving bullock teams and breaking in horses. Smith yearned to be a famous jockey and as a youth won many races for his father at the picnic races. Smith rode as a jockey until he was age 20, but he was never very good. When weight became a problem he took to hurdle racing, but a bad fall, with a broken hip ending his riding career. Tommy Smith rated himself a pretty lousy jockey, but as a trainer, even the legendary Bart Cummings admits to being inspired by the little bloke.

Smith became a trainer, acquiring his licence in 1941. His first success came in 1942 with BRAGGER, a rogue horse he bought from Wagga property owner, Mack Sawyer. Smith took over the Sawyers’s stables at Cootamundra, where, by his own account, he earned a reputation for training winners. He broke in the horse, and named him using his own nickname. Smith also registered the racing silks of green and blue vertical stripes, which were to become famous in later years as the colours of Tulloch Lodge horses. He rented horse boxes in Kensington, housing Bragger in one box, while he lived in the other. TJ was always immaculately dressed at the races, and usually wore a jacket and tie to early morning track work.

According to Bill Whittaker, Smith paid the nomination fee for Bragger by winning at two-up. Bragger won 13 races including Smith's first Group 1 winner in the 1946 Railway Quality, establishing himself as a Sydney trainer. Smith won a significant amount of money backing Bragger to win, but when Bragger went for a spell, Smith blew all of his winnings on flashy suits, hired cars and drinking. Humility wasn't his strong point, variously known as 'The Little General' and 'The Dominator,’ due to his flamboyant style and gregarious character. Almost broke, Smith was saved when Bragger returned from his spell and won again. After this episode, Smith never went broke again. Bragger continued to win races until he was a ten-year-old, when he had to be destroyed after becoming caught in a float fire on his way home from a race meeting.

T.J Smith's reputation as an emerging trainer was further enhanced with the success of PLAYBOY in the 1949 AJC Derby, ridden by George Moore, and whom he also owned. Playboy started at 100/1 and was heavily backed by Smith, earning the trainer a large sum of money. From an early age his eye for horses was uncanny. Even at the peak of his career, when he had 60 horses in training, Smith could recognise in an instant any one of them.

In December 1950 Smith was disqualified from training for five years for not taking sufficient precautions to prevent one of his two-year-olds from being drugged and giving false evidence at a subsequent hearing. Smith appealed the sentence and in January 1951 the Australian Jockey Club (AJC) upheld the appeal and instead chose to issue a "severe reprimand.” His horses were occasionally doped, the cases of SUNSHINE EXPRESS (1950) and TARIEN (1953) drawing the most public attention.

However, on both occasions, the racing authorities blamed others rather than Smith. He had a confrontational personality, which sometimes led him into heated public arguments, especially with the stable jockey George Moore. At the 1956 New Zealand National Sales Smith bought a KHORASSAN colt for 750 guineas. He had difficulty in placing the horse with an owner, but eventually persuaded E. A. Haley to take him. The horse turned our to be TULLOCH, regarded as one of the three finest racehorses in Australian racing history.

Smith won the first of 33 successive Sydney training premierships in 1953 and began to win races outside of Sydney. In 1955, he won Australia richest race, the Melbourne Cup, with TOPAROA, defeating the champion RISING FAST. During the 1950s Smith trained a number of high class horses including REDCRAZE and the exceptional TULLOCH, whose feature race wins including the 1957 Caulfield Cup and 1960 W. S. Cox Plate. Smith went on to win a second Melbourne Cup with JUST A DASH in 1981. T.J was known for keeping his horses very fit using what was called the "bone and muscle" method. According to his longtime veterinarian Percy Sykes, Smith rarely changed his training methods and kept their work consistent. Sykes also claims Smith was a leader in equine nutritional development, in particular the use of protein in feed. Smith employed many long-term staff, including his brother Ernie, who later had his own successful training career and was stable foreman at Tulloch Lodge for nine years

In 1952-1953, Smith won the Sydney Trainers Premiership for the first time, beating rival trainer Maurice McCarten. Smith went on to win the Sydney Trainers Premiership for thirty-three consecutive years before coming second to Brian Mayfield-Smith in the 1985-86 racing season. Smith won the training premiership again in 1987–88. Smith won many feature races during his career including the Chelmsford Stakes on sixteen occasions (a world record for a group race). He also trained winners in many of Australia's richest races including two Melbourne Cups (TOPAROA and JUST A DASH), four Caulfield Cups, seven W. S. Cox Plates, six Golden Slippers, and thirty-five derby winners across Australia. In all Smith trained 7000 winners and 246 Group One winners.

During his long career Tommy trained many champions, such as REDCRAZE (1956 Caulfield Cup, 1957 W. S. Cox Plate, the mighty grey GUNSYND (1972 W. S. Cox Plate and Doncaster Handicap), the champion KINGSTON TOWN(1980, 1981 and 1982 W. S. Cox Plates) and the legendary TULLOCH (1957 Caulfield Cup, 1960 W. S. Cox Plate). Following a brilliant season as a three-year-old, Tulloch contracted a virus which kept him from the racecourse for two years. Through Smith's care and perseverance and the work of his vet, Sykes, they brought Tulloch back from near death. Tulloch went on to win 36 of his 53 race starts and set race records for the W. S. Cox Plate and Caulfield Cup. In winning the 1957 AJC Derby he took two seconds off the race record set by PHAR LAP. In honour of his champion, Smith named his main stables Tulloch Lodge.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s Smith trained the great KINGSTON TOWN to multiple stakes victories including the W.S. Cox Plate three times in a row. Kingston Town carved out a formidable record in Sydney, winning 21 races in a row on Sydney tracks and won group races from 1200 metres to 3200 metres. Kingston Town was inducted into the Australian Racing Hall of Fame in 2001. Smith also trained six winners of Australia's richest and most prestigious two-year-old race, the Golden Slipper. He was the first person to breed, own and train a Golden Slipper winner, being the filly BOUNDING AWAY. Smith's secondary stables were named Bounding Away Stables in her honour.

As with Tulloch Lodge, these stables are now used by Smith's daughter Gai Waterhouse. Smith's daughter Gai took out a trainer's licence following a long-running dispute with racing authorities caused by her marriage to warned off bookmaker Robbie Waterhouse. While TJ Smith continued to train horses with reduced numbers, Waterhouse took over the running of Tulloch Lodge in 1994. Waterhouse's main stable is still called Tulloch Lodge and the term is sometimes used to describe the Smith/Waterhouse dynasty as a whole. Smith died in 1998, in Sydney, the day before what would have been his 82nd birthday.

TOMMY ‘T.J’ SMITH is considered one of the most dominant figures in Australian horse-racing in the second half of the twentieth century. He was inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame in 1996 and the Australian Racing Museum Hall of Fame in 2001, and in 1999 the Endeavour Stakes were renamed the T. J. Smith Stakes, run at Randwick in April.