Jana Rawlinson
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Jana Rawlinson (born November 9, 1982 in Sydney as Jana Pittman) is an Australian athlete who specialises in the 200 m and 400 m hurdles events. She won gold in the 400m hurdles in the 2002 Commonwealth Games, 2006 Commonwealth Games and in the 2003 World Championships. She was also a member of Australia's gold medal-winning 4x400 m relay team at Manchester in 2002 with Tamsyn Lewis, Cathy Freeman and Lauren Hewitt. She won Gold in the 400m in the 2006 commonwealth games. She wore braces on her teeth until the day before her wedding.
Rawlinson, who competed until March 2006 under her maiden name Pittman, won the 200 m, 400 m and 400 m hurdles at the Australian trials for the 1999 World Youth Championships. In 2000, she became the first woman ever to win the 400 m flat and hurdles double at any IAAF or IOC championships - in this case, the 2000 World Junior Championships in Chile.
Jana is an alumni of Mount Saint Benedict in Western Sydney and went to Matthew Pearce Primary School.
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[edit] Knee injury
Just before the Athens Olympics, Jana tore her cartilage in her right knee during a warm-up for a track meet in Zurich. Pittman was favourite 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. 3.
Her teammate Lewis's criticism of the media publicity surrounding Jana and her knee (which received front page coverage in the tabloids) was the precursor for the current enmity between the two.
[edit] Negative public image
On 10 March 2006, in an article in The Sydney Morning Herald she announced her intention to leave Australia, possibly for the UK, after the negative publicity surrounding her knee and her disagreement with fellow athlete Tamsyn Lewis: "Since Athens, my image is all about drama and I hate it." Jana said there had been a "mixed" response from the Australian public since Lewis dubbed their rivalry a "catfight" and a "bitchfight".
Jana said she had been walking down the street a week earlier when a group of men in a car yelled out, "We love you, Tamsyn, we hate you, Pitts". "I didn't create that", the 400 m hurdler was quoted as saying. "I didn't want that". She also referenced the current edition of Ralph magazine at the time, in which Lewis posed in a bikini and which carried the tag line on the cover, "It's alright Tam, we don't like Jana Pittman either".
In the buildup to her races at the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, Jana was widely reported as being nervous about the possible crowd reaction in the wake of the negative publicity detailed above. However, the ovation of the home crowd was loud and long, both before and after the 400 m hurdles Final, and in interviews afterwards Jana expressed her feelings of relief. The crowd response was strikingly different at a nightclub hosting post-games celebrations, where after an introduction she was booed off stage 4.
[edit] 2006 Commonwealth Games
At the Melbourne Commonwealth Games Jana successfully defended her two Commonwealth titles.
[edit] 4 x 400 m Relay
At as Manchester, Jana was a member of Australia's 4x400m relay team (with Lewis, Caitlin Willis and Rosemary Hayward), which was awarded the gold medal after the disqualification of the England team for a baton-change violation 5.
She later wrote a letter of apology to the English team and offered her gold medal to them. Jana blamed the disqualification of England on Lewis who, with Jana, 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. 6. According to the ABC Sports Desk 7, the officials were moving to disqualify England anyway. England head coach, Brad McStravick, in an interview with the ABC TV Program Offsiders, questioned Jana'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 8.
[edit] 400 m Hurdles
Jana won the 400m hurdles title with a new Games Record time of 53.82 seconds. This was her first major championship in the event since her 2004 knee injury and subsequent stress fractures in her back.
[edit] Marriage to Chris Rawlinson
On March 31st, 2006, Jana married Chris Rawlinson at Morningstar Estate on the Mornington Peninsula, Victoria. Chris Rawlinson, also a specialist 400 m hurdles runner, has been Jana's personal coach since 2004. Like fellow Australian athlete Lleyton Hewitt, the wedding photographs were exclusively sold to Australian women's magazine, Women's Weekly 7.
On 14th December 2006 Rawlinson gave birth to the couples first child - a boy named Cornelis Levi. Jana has also announced that she will retire to concentrate on family life after the Beijing Olympics.
