A LONG ROAD BACK TO A VERY LONG JUMP

Wellington long jumper Phoebe Edwards is back and she’s having fun again.

Until this year, Edwards, a top athlete in her teens, had never competed as a senior athlete in New Zealand.

In March, the 26-year-old won a national long jump title in a lifetime best of 6.28m after returning to the sport two months earlier following a four-year break.

She now ranks 13th on the New Zealand all-time rankings and has gone from eighth to first in the 2024 rankings. She has also been selected for the Oceania Athletics championships, starting on June 1, in Fiji.

Edwards’ 6.28m performance at the national championships would have comfortably won the Oceania title in 2017 and would have placed her in the top 10 at the Birmingham Commonwealth Games.

Yet she only started training two months before those championships, doing two or three sessions a week around her full-time job with the police.

In 2020, Edwards was done with athletics. She had returned to New Zealand from an athletics scholarship with the University of Wisconsin, where she was an All-Big 10 Honoree.

She was burned out from the experience, having also had medical issues and Covid-related breaks from training and competition.

So, when back in Wellington, she instead kept up her fitness by playing rugby and sevens.

“I did not foresee myself coming back to athletics,” she says. “I was over it and a bit burned out. I didn’t even get to do my last US season outdoors because of Covid. I just wanted to do other things and not be tied to athletics.

“l came home and started afresh.”

She did keep in touch with her long-term Wellington coach, Mike Ritchie, who was keen to get her back. Ritchie had coached Edwards to several U18 and U20 national titles in high jump, long jump, hurdles and heptathlon– and, in 2005, to the IAAF World Youth championships.  The heptathlon comprises the 100m hurdles, 200m, 800m, long jump, high jump, shot put and javelin. 

“We had been talking about it on and off over the past few years and I always gave her a hard time when she went off and played football and rugby,” Ritchie says.

“Phoebe’s always been a good long jumper, she’s always come off the ground brilliantly. All we need to do is work into how she can run the run-up and work out what to do at the end of the run-up to take off efficiently. I’ve always thought long jump was her best event – she’s got speed, strength, she’s got everything.”

Now, Edwards has an outside chance of a medal at the Oceania championships in her first national senior team. The spark and enjoyment are back.

“I’m really excited,” she says. “It’s been a long, long time since I was on a New Zealand team. It’s been eight years since I previously competed in New Zealand and nine years since I was on a New Zealand team. I always liked travelling when I was a teenager so I’m sure it will be just as good now as an adult, and Fiji is a good place to go to.”

While rugby has helped Edwards with her fitness and long jump run-ups, in 2021 she tore her Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) and underwent surgery the following year.

It wasn’t until December 2023 that she decided to contact Ritchie to ask him to coach her again. She thought she could do some jumping for fun and perhaps enter her first senior nationals, given this year’s event was in her hometown, Wellington. Maybe she could get a long jump national medal if things worked out.

Things are clearly working out.

Edwards’ lifetime best before her hiatus was 5.85m, so she has improved by more than 40cm. Another similar improvement, and she will be the country’s best ever long jumper.  

“I’ve had so much fun these past few months, being in the sun with old friends. I like competing and I’m excited to compete,” she says.

Edwards says winning the national title is a bigger deal than selection to the Oceania Championships.

“I’ve not won a senior national title – I never thought I would, I gave up four years ago.”

Ritchie knows Edwards will improve.

“She’s worked at it, she’s persevered, she’s had the drive, and that’s why she’s such a good athlete,” he says. “I think she’s capable of doing 6.40m.”

If anyone would know, Ritchie would. That distance would rank Edwards in the top six in the all-time rankings and be the best jump by a New Zealander since 1998.

Edwards says now that she is in her mid-twenties, she is suited to long jump and looks forward to training sessions.

“I like the training, the long jump is one of these events you can do into your thirties, which is cool, I don’t want to be limited by my ageing.

“I love it when young people talk about ageing,” Ritchie adds.

Edwards hopes her experience and newfound enjoyment of her sport will spur others who may consider returning to their sport after time away.

Maybe other people will think about doing that,” she says.

“Changing my mindset was really important. I am not putting too much internal pressure on myself or putting my mental energy into it – I’m just enjoying the process. I’m enjoying the moments when it’s going well, and not taking it too seriously.”

Edwards, who won a national title in the vault as a junior gymnast, became serious about athletics when she was 13.  She competed at the annual Colgate Games, an athletics event in each island for those aged seven to 14.

“I wasn’t the best athlete, I was never winning things, I was quite small.”

She last represented New Zealand aged 16 at the 2005 IAAF World Youth Athletics Championships in the heptathlon.  Also on that team was her next-door neighbour, steeplechaser Kelsey Forman, who introduced her to athletics aged nine.  Both also competed in Australia in 2005, breaking national age group records to qualify, Edwards in the heptathlon. She also won the U18 high jump title in Australia.

The previous year she first competed in Australia and became a national titleholder in two countries, but in the high jump, not the long jump. 

“I don’t think I really tapped my potential with long jump, and so I thought if I could put it together, the long jump would be my best event,” she now says.

In January, she started training twice a week.     

“I said to Mike I wanted to jump 5.50m because that’s respectable, but I didn’t know what shape I was in.”

Ritchie did. He immediately thought Edwards could jump 6m and win a national title.

“After the first January training session I did, yes,” he says.  

“I did my first competition, I had so much fun, and it was, like, it’s going great, I’m just going to keep going.”  Edwards adds.

That was the Cooks Classic in January where her winning jump was 5.89m – a 4cm lifetime best. She aimed to break 6m at the Athletics Wellington championships the following month. She jumped 6.10m for that title. It was her 26^th birthday. It was then she had her eye on a senior national title.

“When I jumped over 6m I thought ‘I want to win, now.’ It’s not so much that I thought I could, It’s that I wanted to.”

She did.

The following month at nationals she jumped 18cm further for her first senior national title, and ahead of Kelsey Berryman, a three-time title holder.

“I was really happy with that. It was nice to put it together at nationals. I was a bit surprised, but I have high expectations and it felt like a good jump,” Edwards says.

She intends to increase the number of weekly training sessions and reassess her goals after the Oceania championships.

“If I do well at Oceanias I may try to plan my summer a bit more around athletics.”

She would not have said that late last year. 

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2024-05-07T17:01:44Z dg43tfdfdgfd