Jana Pittman (born 9 November 1982) is an Australian former athlete. During her athletic career Pittman specialised in the 400 metres run and 400-metre hurdles events. She is a two-time world champion in the 400 m hurdles, from 2003 and 2007. She also won the gold medal in this event at the 2002 and 2006 Commonwealth Games and was part of Australia's winning 4 × 400 metres relay teams at both events.
Just before the Athens Olympics, Pittman tore her right meniscus during a warm-up for a track meet in Zurich, where she had been favoured to win the 400 m hurdles event. After undergoing surgery in London only one week before the start of the games, she ran 5th in the final.[6]
2006 Commonwealth Games
At the Melbourne Commonwealth Games Jana Pittman successfully defended her two Commonwealth titles.
4×400m Relay
As at the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester, Pittman-Rawlinson was a member of Australia's gold medal-winning 4 × 400 m relay team (with Tamsyn Lewis, Caitlin Willis and Rosemary Hayward). However, the 2006 Aussie team was awarded the gold medal after the disqualification of the England team for running outside their lane.[7] Pittman later wrote a letter of apology to the English team and offered her gold medal to them. She blamed the disqualification on Lewis who, alongside Pittman, went up to the officials after the race to point out the violation of Englishwoman Natasha Danvers-Smith of taking an incorrect position on the starting leg.[8] According to the ABC Sports Desk[9] the officials were moving to disqualify England anyway. England head coach, Brad McStravick, questioned Pittman's motivation for writing the letter: "I know she is going to spend, well, at least half the year in England and I think some of the girls wondered whether it was just to try and make peace, so that she wouldn't face any animosity once she was living and training in England," he said.[10]
400m Hurdles
Pittman won the 400m hurdles title with a new Games record time of 53.83 seconds.[11] This was her first major championship in the event since her 2004 knee injury and subsequent stress fractures in her back.
After delivering her first child, Cornelis, Pittman had her wisdom teeth removed and a 10-week injury break with plantar fasciitis. Despite these difficulties, she ran well on the European circuit and comfortably won the 400 m hurdles at the Osaka World Championships.
She carried a slight injury through her 2007 season, having surgery later in the year to remove loose cartilage and floating bone fragments in the second toe of her right foot.
Pittman was pre-selected for the 2008 Australian Olympic team in late 2007.
Beijing 2008
In January 2008, Pittman was nominated for 'Comeback of the Year' at the Laureus World Sports Awards after winning the World Title in Osaka, within 9 months of giving birth to her son.
In February 2008, Pittman again set her sights on Olympic victory at the Beijing Olympics. But on 9 July 2008, Pittman announced she would not be competing at the Beijing Games, because of the complications with the toe injury.[12]The Australian subsequently reported that a large number of Australians had "viciously turned against the fallen track star", strongly criticising her.[13]
Injury problems
On 29 June 2009, Pittman returned to racing after more than a year with a victory in the Grand Prix event at Málaga, Spain. She won the 400-metre hurdles in a time of 55.67 seconds ahead of UkrainianAnastasiya Rabchenyuk and Janet Wienand of South Africa.[14] However, she was not fit enough to defend her title at the 2009 World Championships. A hamstring problem caused by bulging disc in her back interrupted her preparation for the tournament, but she was confident of a return, saying "I hope I can recover from this latest setback and get back on track for my long-term goal and dream – winning Olympic Gold in London in 2012".[15]
Another 20 months passed before her return to competition. In April 2011, she beat domestic rival Lauren Boden on the final leg of the Australian Athletics Tour.[16]
Pittman suffered a foot injury in March 2012 which put her out of contention for the London Olympics, and resulted in her deciding to retire from athletics. After trying rowing and boxing, she elected to try her hand at bobsledding, acting as brakewoman to Australian pilot Astrid Radjenovic with a view to competing at the 2014 Winter Olympics.[17] In her first race Radjenovic and Pittman scored Australia's best ever World Cup finish with a seventh place at Altenberg in January 2013.[18]
2014 Sochi Winter Olympics
In 2014, Pittman competed in the two-person bobsleigh event at the Sochi Winter Olympics. In doing so she became the first female (and second overall after Paul Narracott) to represent Australia in both the summer and winter olympics. The team of Pittman (brakeman) and Astrid Radjenovic (pilot) finished in 14th position.[19]
Medical career
In January 2013, while training for the Sochi Winter Olympic Games, Pittman began studying medicine at Western Sydney University;[20] she received her medical MBBS degree from this university in 2019.[21]
On 31 March 2006, Pittman married English athlete Chris Rawlinson at Morningstar Estate on the Mornington Peninsula, Victoria. Rawlinson, also a specialist 400 m hurdler, coached Jana from 2004 to 2009. On 14 December 2006, she gave birth to the couple's son, Cornelis. She later stated that she had gone for a hard twenty-minute run on the morning of the birth and "felt like a whale". In April 2009, it was announced that Pittman and Rawlinson had separated after three years of marriage and, in May 2009, she returned to training under Craig Hilliard, who had previously coached her.[26] In an interview on 24 October 2009, her new role as a single mother was described as "Jana's toughest hurdle".[27]
In May 2009, it was revealed that Pittman had undergone breast implant surgery after the birth of her son.[28] The following year she announced she'd had the implants removed as they had "affected her running", but would consider having her breasts augmented again once her athletic career was over.[29]
In January 2010, it was announced that Pittman had been reconciled with Rawlinson and that they would renew their vows.[29] On 31 March 2010, Pittman renewed vows with Rawlinson in England, wearing an unconventional red wedding dress.[30] However, on 16 April 2011, it was announced that Pittman and Rawlinson had split again and they divorced.[31]
In 2015, after a cervical cancer scare, Jana decided to use an anonymous sperm donor to conceive her second child, a daughter, while she was dating runner James Gurr.[32][33] In 2016, she had her third child, another daughter, using the same donor while studying Medicine at the University of Western Sydney. In January 2020, Pittman began working as a junior doctor at Blacktown Hospital in Sydney's west.[34][35][33][21]
In April 2017, Pittman announced her engagement to IT consultant Rajiv Chaudhri.[36]
In May 2020, Pittman revealed she had been with Sydney businessman Paul Gatward for almost six months and that they were expecting their first child together—Pittman's fourth and Gatward's first.[33][34] They planned to elope in June, and by the time their son was born around November 2020, they had been married just a few months.[34][35][33]
In October 2021, Pittman revealed that she and Gatward were expecting twins.[37] On 22 March 2022, Pittman gave birth naturally to a daughter and a son.[38]
Catherine Astrid Salome Freeman is an Aboriginal Australian former sprinter, who specialised in the 400 metres event. Her personal best of 48.63 seconds currently ranks her as the ninth-fastest woman of all time, set while finishing second to Marie-José Pérec's number-four time at the 1996 Olympics. She became the Olympic champion for the women's 400 metres at the 2000 Summer Olympics, at which she had lit the Olympic Flame.
The 400 metres hurdles is a track and field hurdling event. The event has been on the Olympic athletics programme since 1900 for men and since 1984 for women.
Christopher "Chris" Lee Rawlinson is a former track and field athlete who competed in the 400 metre hurdles.
The women's 400 metres hurdles at the 2004 Summer Olympics as part of the athletics program were held at the Athens Olympic Stadium from August 21 to 25.
Tamsyn Carolyn Lewis is an Australian media personality and former track and field athlete who won a total of eighteen Australian Championships across the 400 metres, 800 metres and 400m hurdles. She first represented Australia in 1994, and won the 800 metres in the 2008 World Indoor Championships.
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Debra ("Debbie") Lee Flintoff-King, (OAM) is a retired Australian athlete, and winner of the women's 400 m hurdles event at the 1988 Seoul Olympics.
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Astrid Loch-Wilkinson , also known as Astrid Radjenovic, is an Australian bobsledder who has competed since 2003.
Cecilia McIntosh is an Australian athlete who won a silver medal in the javelin throw at the 2002 Commonwealth Games, represented Australia in bobsled at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, was a runner-up at the 1997 Australian Weightlifting Championships and is an Australian rules footballer who played for the Collingwood Football Club in the AFL Women's competition (AFLW).
Kimberley Jean "Kim" Brennan is an Australian retired rower. She is a sixteen-time national champion, two-time World Champion, three-time Olympian and Olympic gold medallist.
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Lauren Boden is an Australian athletics competitor. Her events are the 400 metre hurdles, 400 metres and long jump. She was the youngest woman to win the 400 metres hurdle event at the Australian national championships. She has competed in the long jump event and the 400 metres hurdle event at the World University Games. She has competed at the 2006 and 2010 Commonwealth Games and the 2012 and 2016 Summer Olympics in the 400 metre hurdles event.
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Craig Hilliard is a leading Australian athletics coach and was appointed Head Coach of the Australian Athletics Team in 2015.
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