Illustrious fencing career nearing its end?

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31987, 14 May 1969, Page 15

Illustrious fencing career nearing its end?

'TWENTY-ONE consecutive A years in the New Zealand finals, five times the national champion and more than a dozen times in second place, and three times a New Zealand representative—this is the enviable record of Mrs Olga Jekyll, one of the Dominion’s most talented and respected fencers. Mrs Jekyll has been fencing since 1938. She was a finalist in the first New Zealand women’s foil championship in 1946 and was a finalalist in every succeeding year until 1966. She finished second in the first championship and for the next three years had to be content with the same position. Then in 1950 she won the championship for the first time, successfully defending it in 1951-52-53. She represented New Zealand at the Commonwealth Games in Auckland in 1950 and was just a touch off a bronze medal, finishing fourth. This evening, Mrs Jekyll will be representing the South Island against the visiting Australian team in Christchurch. In the South Island championships her dominance has been remarkable. Since the championships began more than 25 years ago she

has won the title each time she has entered. Her record of consecutive wins has been broken only by her absence from the tournament in one year. Her record against Australian fencers is also out-

standing. She finished ahead of all but one in the Commonwealth Games in 1950, won a place in the Australian championships while representing New Zealand in 1963 and beat the four members of the Australian team which toured New Zealand in 1965 when she was

the fourth-ranked New Zealand player. Since the war she was nominated by the New Zealand Fencing Association for each Olympic and Commonwealth Games until 1966, but in her finest year, 1956, New Zealand sent only a small team to Melbourne for the Olympics and she was not picked. When Miss M. D. Coleman won the gold medal in the foil event at Perth in 1962, Mrs Jekyll had already scored several victories against her in competition here. To mark her 21 years In the New Zealand championship final, older members of the association who had long retired put on a special party* at the championships in Auckland in 1966 to mark her achievement. “It became a standard joke among fencers to rib me each time I turned up at the championship, but when I told them in 1966 that it was my twenty-first championship and that I had made the final each time, they decided to put on a surprise party. Since then I have not been able to make the finals. This year may be the last competitive New Zealand championships for me." One of her early coaches,

Sir Joseph Ward, described her as a young fencer in 1938 who showed promise. “She developed into a forceful and attacking fencer with tremendous stamina and a high degree of concentration,” he said. As she begins to withdraw from competitive fencing her enthusiasm for the sport is not diminishing. She began the United Fencing Club 15 years ago and now spends her spare time coaching there and at Avonside Girls’ High School. Before beginning the United Club she was reared in fencing in the Christchurch Swords Club, the first club formed in New Zealand. Her training is becoming a little more leisurely now but in the best years, apart from the hours of practising the skills, she used to do a lot of jogging round Hagley Park clutching a lemon in her hand, which she sucked when the effort began to tell. Of her pupils, past and present, she says there were many who gave up after a few years. “Fencing is a hard sport and many, when they begin want to be dashing Errol Flynns flashing their sabres, but they fade out after two or three years. You need tremendous concentration; you must be able to make the opponent do what you want her to do and when she does, it gives you great satisfaction.” Her concentration has taken her to the highest pinnacle of the sport—New Zealand representation—and if her coaching success is as good her pupils should soon follow. Already she has had the pleasure of seeing the Avonside Girls’ High School A team win the Canterbury secondary schools’ championships.