Dorothy Smith, as Dorothy Brookes, won the 1938 Yorkshire skipping and club-swinging titles at the Saltaire Gymnasium. That same year, she represented the Northern Counties at the Belgian National Gymnastics Fete at Ostend. In 1947 she competed in the first post-war national championships, and finished third behind two fellow Yorkshire women, Pat Hirst and the 1939 winner Clarice Bell. At the 1948 London Olympics, Smith was one of four Yorkshire women in the British ladies team that finished ninth in the all-round competition. Her coach at the Bingley Gymnastics Club was her mother Regina Brooke, and her father Frank, was the one-time secretary and president of the Yorkshire Amateur Gymnastics Association.