Teddi Jenkins


Edwina "Teddi" Jenkins is an English born Australian former short track speed skater and long track speed skater. As a short track speed skater she became ten times 500m champion and won a total of 48 titles between 1954 and 1969.

Biography

Jenkins was born in England. She has a twin sister Toni. As teenagers, they moved in the early 1950s to Australia and lived in bayside suburb of Sandringham, Victoria. After arriving in there, she started with short track skating in Melbourne together with her twin sister. They were coached by Eddie Spicer. Per week she trained 2 times at the ice, 2 times racing, 5 times at the gym and running three times. With the help of Spicer, Jenkins won within two years her first of her Victorian-Australian championship doubles. When she was 18 years old, she won the Ladies' Quarter Mile title in 1954 in Sydney. She couldn't perform will in the half-mile event due to several falls caused by blunt skates. Her step-father told the press that someone had taken her skates before the event and returned them with ground down edges.
As a long track speed skater, she became the second Australian women who represented Australia at an international championship, after Jeannette Ann Neil. Jenkins competed at the World Allround Speed Skating Championships for Women in 1963 in Karuizawa, Japan, finishing 33rd overall ; 1000m: 1.45,3 and 1500m: 2.55,4.
As of 2008 she has stil the 500m rink record on Lake Ida in New Zealand with 59.5s, set in the early-1970s at the Inter-Dominion skate meeting.
At the age of 37, she won the 500m national title after winning the 1000m and 1500m event at the Sydney's Prince Alfred Park rink in 1969, making a grand total of 48 Australian titles. She didn't compete every year at the nationals, missing 1967 and 1968 due to pregnancy. Her son David was born in 1968.
In the 1960s, she donated a trophy for the Ladies Relay at the Duke Trophy, an annual inter-state short track speed skating competition in Australia. The ninth inductee to the Australian Ice Racing Roll of Honour, her trophy known as the AIRC Teddi Jenkins Shield was no longer awarded from 2015.

Records

Personal records (speed skating)