The Australian Women's Register

Summary

Judith Joy Davies was an Australian Olympian who won a bronze medal in the 100-metre backstroke at the 1948 Summer Olympics in London and followed up with three gold medals at the 1950 Empire Games in Auckland. She won seventeen Australian championships in freestyle, backstroke and medley swimming. After finishing her swimming career she worked as a sporting journalist for the Melbourne newspapers The Argus and The Sun-News Pictorial.

Davies was inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame in 2011 as a General Member for her contribution as a sportswriter. She was one of the first women journalists to break into covering all sports when she started working with the Melbourne newspaper The Argus, in an era when women sports writers were normally confined to covering women’s sport. Her Argus experience included covering the 1954 Commonwealth Games in Vancouver and then the 1956 Olympics in her home town of Melbourne.

When the Argus ceased publication in 1957 she joined the rival Sun News Pictorial where she was to cover local and international sport for the next 31 years. She was widely respected by both editors and athletes and in 1982 was awarded the National Press Club Award for Sports Journalism.

Events

• 1948

  Swimming – 100m Backstroke

  Bronze Medalist at the London Olympic Games
• 1952

  Competed in Helsinki

• 1950

  Swimming – 110y Backstroke; 4 x 110y Freestyle Relay; 3 x 110y Medley Relay

  Gold Medalist at Auckland Empire Games