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Giving birth to a baby and a world record - The Amazing Jana Rawlinson
source: Jenny McAsey for The Australian News Date: 12/21/07

She gave birth to a son -- and eight months later won a new world record. Now Jana Rawlinson, Autralian hurdler, is on track for Beijing

There are two Jana Rawlinsons. One is so strong and driven that in August
this year she
became world 400m hurdles champion for the second time. The other Jana is the one who must seek her husband's reassurance at the last moment before she races.

Both were on show before the final at the world athletics championships in Osaka. "The last thing I said to him before I went to the call room, and probably no one will believe I ever say this, was: 'Will you still love me? Just please don't be disappointed if I don't do this,'" Rawlinson, 25, recalls. "I always say that, which is ridiculous. But that was my biggest worry. Silly, isn't it?" She laughs, secure now after her win.

And this was a victory unlike anything Rawlinson had achieved before. Racing eight months after giving birth to her first child, son Cornelis, Rawlinson conquered the globe on only a few months' full training.

As always, her strength and her vulnerability were the two factors that powered her incredible feat. Here is a woman who is highly strung and emotional one minute, cool and ruthlessly competitive the next. This is the yin and yang of Jana - and perhaps the cause of the mixed public reaction to one of Australia's most talented athletes.

As Rawlinson relates the story of her pre-race jitters in the lounge room of her modern home in Sydney's northwest, with Cornelis playing at her feet, husband Chris walks into the room. He hears what she says, smiles and rolls his eyes. Yes, his look says, it is very silly. But that is the sometimes insecure, soft-hearted Jana he fell in love with when she was at her lowest, amid the crazy media hoo-ha surrounding her knee injury at the 2004 Athens Olympics.

But as he witnessed when the then Jana Pittman rallied to finish a brave fifth in the Olympic final, and again post-baby in Osaka this year, his wife has her steely side.

"For me it is the same for every race," Jana says. "As soon as I go through to the call room and I can't see him anymore, it is 'Right, okay, business.'

"I don't look like I have vulnerabilities when I race, so I have a real split personality in that I am very soft and then very hard, and luckily the hardness - I don't need to manipulate it - just comes out as soon as I get nervous. My vulnerability flies out the window. And I usually run well."

That she does. Rawlinson became a pin-up new mother when she won in Osaka. Remarkably, she became a world-beater at a time when many first-time mothers are still in a hazy state from sleep deprivation and the shock of their radically changed life.

As the public learnt the details of a fitness campaign that included a run a few hours before she gave birth and a stairs session in the hospital the day after, the headlines back home read: "Supermum Jana". Her win was the culmination of an extraordinary regime that began when she got pregnant in April 2006, just after she had won gold in the 400m hurdles at the Melbourne Commonwealth Games and then married Chris on Victoria's Mornington Peninsula.

"So many people said, 'It (pregnancy) is the biggest mistake you have made, you won't be able to get back,'" says Rawlinson, who plans to keep running until the 2012 London Olympics. "I never thought it was a mistake. I have been clucky since I was 10 years old. I had met the love of my life, he was 35 and he didn't want to be a 45-year-old dad for his first one. And I want three or four so we had to start then or we wouldn't fit that many in!"

The sceptics brought out the iron in her. She has never shied away from hard training and even a growing belly wasn't going to get in her way. With the help of Chris, who won the 400m hurdles at the 2002 Commonwealth Games, a taxing but safe training regime was crafted.

"We were really diligent with diet and exercise and we had a good obstetrician who gave me regular scans so we were sure there was no harm to the baby," she explains. "I trained the entire way through, but if I train at 100 per cent now, I trained at 70 per cent during the pregnancy. I never ran to the point where I was ill, whereas now I run to the point where I am ill every time I train. All I wanted to do was keep my fitness up."

She does not pretend it was easy. "I didn't enjoy the last three months of training, it was disgusting trying to run around with a massive belly and feeling so uncomfortable." But the long-term goal of building a solid fitness base for this year's world championships and next year's Olympics drove her on.

On December 13 she did a big weights session in the gym, then went home and had labour-inducing raspberry leaf tea and a hot curry. The next morning she ran hard for 30 minutes and that afternoon Cornelis, a healthy eight pounds (3.6kg), was born. By Christmas Day she was doing a strenuous session on the steep hill that leads into the quiet cul-de-sac where the Rawlinsons live.

But as any new mother knows, keeping fit after the baby is harder than you might expect. As her body adjusted post-pregnancy, with ligaments softened and hormones going haywire, she was struck by repeated injury, including a serious foot problem that took 10 weeks to heal. That was when she thought the sceptics might be right. "The realisation kicked in that I might never run fast again. I was in such bad shape it was ridiculous."

But, as is her way, she persisted. The family moved camp to Chris's former bachelor cottage in Loughborough, England, and she ran her first race in Portugal in May. She shocked herself with excellent times, and dared to hope she could make the final at the world champs. Three months later, she had done that and much more.

For Rawlinson, who has had a fraught relationship with the Australian public, it was not just any win. While she tries not to care any more about public opinion, the supermum headlines were a welcome change from the "Jana drama" line that haunted her during the 2004 Athens Olympics, and again in 2006, before the Melbourne Commonwealth Games, when she was drawn into a public spat with her teammate, Tamsyn Lewis.

"She was portrayed negatively through no fault of her own in the PR battle between her and Tamsyn," says sports commentator and former Olympic long jumper David Culbert. "Tamsyn is a good media performer and played it beautifully and Jana was sucked into it. But now I believe she has restored the Australian public's confidence in her as a person. And I don't think the win had much to do with it, because she has always been a winner.

"She is a Rolls-Royce of an athlete - there are very few athletes like her in world sport. If she is fit and ready to race, she wins."

Culbert lists Rawlinson's achievements: world youth hurdles champion at 16, world junior 400m and 400m hurdles champion at 17 (while doing her HSC), Commonwealth hurdles champion at 19, world hurdles champion at 20 (the youngest ever in her event), and now twice world champion.

What mattered most was the way a calmer, more mature Rawlinson handled the build-up to Osaka and then her victory - she kept a low profile and spoke only to a few trusted people in the sporting media. Says Culbert: "It was the change of approach, to talking about her performances after they happen and not talking about them before they happen. So no previews, just reviews."

It was a very deliberate plan. Rawlinson says she learnt a harsh lesson by being too open, particularly at the Athens Games when her knee injury became a daily soap opera. "We made many mistakes when it comes to the media," she reflects. "I can say we made a lot of bad judgment calls with things we said or didn't say and it bit us on the backside countless times.

"I trusted people with too much information and I trusted they would decipher what was newsworthy. I didn't think I was big enough news. The only experience I had had with the media was after I won the world title in 2003 and they were awesome, everyone was nice, I didn't read a bad word, and that is how I expected it to be.

"I have always been a very open person. Open with my feelings and opinions. I trust so easily and therefore I have got myself into trouble in the past because I genuinely believe everybody is good, and when you have that belief, you don't put your guard up as much. You assume people will treat you the way you treat them, and that they aren't going to hurt you."

She can sense that she has regained some respect, but is not getting too caught up in it. "Even this year I have still had people saying they don't like me; we have come across web forums where people say things. But there is nothing I can do about it and realistically they don't know you," she shrugs.

Her husband, an affable man with a cheeky grin, has shielded her but also tried to harden her shell. "The biggest thing is Chris's influence because he really does not give an absolute s--t about what anybody thinks, so we are the opposite ends of the spectrum," she says. "I really care and he really doesn't care, so we meet somewhere in the middle and I can deal with things a lot better now."

And then there's motherhood. She is easygoing and playful with Cor, who was walking before he was 10 months old and appears to have inherited his parents' athletic genes. The experience has altered her priorities. If there were a public controversy now, her reaction would be completely different.

"We would just go home and stay completely out of it, whereas before I felt like you always had to defend yourself and I would get really upset. My reputation not only affects me now, it affects my family, so I don't want Cor growing up with people saying, 'Your mummy did this or that.'

"What I care about has changed in life, therefore I don't worry as much. I am much more worried about these two," she says, nodding at Chris and Cor, "than I am about someone external."

The supermum tag was "lovely" but one she says applies more aptly to other mums. "I met a woman the other day who has two sets of twins, and I think what she has done is harder than what I have done. I have had one little boy and I have an amazing support network of family behind me."

With a beloved baby and two world championship titles, what more does a girl want? Simple. An Olympic title in Beijing in 2008. "The Olympics is the be-all and end-all and I don't think about much else in terms of sport," she says.

Culbert says the spotlight on Rawlinson will intensify, as it did before Athens, and she needs to tread warily. "It is fantastic to have the Australian public recognising that Jana is one of our best athletes, in any sport. She deserves not to be treated like 'Jana drama' but to be treated like Jana the superstar she is. That is what has happened, and how she handled things this year has to be the template for next year."

She knows that better than anyone, so don't expect to hear too much from Rawlinson between now and next August. "I am scared, even 10 months away, but the race is going to come and I have got to conquer this one," she says. "It will be great. This will be one of those years that defines you as a person."

There are two Jana Rawlinsons. One is so strong and driven that in August this year she became world 400m hurdles champion for the second time. The other Jana is the one who must seek her husband's reassurance at the last moment before she races.
Both were on show before the final at the world athletics championships in Osaka. "The last thing I said to him before I went to the call room, and probably no one will believe I ever say this, was: 'Will you still love me? Just please don't be disappointed if I don't do this,'" Rawlinson, 25, recalls. "I always say that, which is ridiculous. But that was my biggest worry. Silly, isn't it?" She laughs, secure now after her win.

And this was a victory unlike anything Rawlinson had achieved before. Racing eight months after giving birth to her first child, son Cornelis, Rawlinson conquered the globe on only a few months' full training.

As always, her strength and her vulnerability were the two factors that powered her incredible feat. Here is a woman who is highly strung and emotional one minute, cool and ruthlessly competitive the next. This is the yin and yang of Jana - and perhaps the cause of the mixed public reaction to one of Australia's most talented athletes.

As Rawlinson relates the story of her pre-race jitters in the lounge room of her modern home in Sydney's northwest, with Cornelis playing at her feet, husband Chris walks into the room. He hears what she says, smiles and rolls his eyes. Yes, his look says, it is very silly. But that is the sometimes insecure, soft-hearted Jana he fell in love with when she was at her lowest, amid the crazy media hoo-ha surrounding her knee injury at the 2004 Athens Olympics.

But as he witnessed when the then Jana Pittman rallied to finish a brave fifth in the Olympic final, and again post-baby in Osaka this year, his wife has her steely side.

"For me it is the same for every race," Jana says. "As soon as I go through to the call room and I can't see him anymore, it is 'Right, okay, business.'

"I don't look like I have vulnerabilities when I race, so I have a real split personality in that I am very soft and then very hard, and luckily the hardness - I don't need to manipulate it - just comes out as soon as I get nervous. My vulnerability flies out the window. And I usually run well."

That she does. Rawlinson became a pin-up new mother when she won in Osaka. Remarkably, she became a world-beater at a time when many first-time mothers are still in a hazy state from sleep deprivation and the shock of their radically changed life.

As the public learnt the details of a fitness campaign that included a run a few hours before she gave birth and a stairs session in the hospital the day after, the headlines back home read: "Supermum Jana". Her win was the culmination of an extraordinary regime that began when she got pregnant in April 2006, just after she had won gold in the 400m hurdles at the Melbourne Commonwealth Games and then married Chris on Victoria's Mornington Peninsula.

"So many people said, 'It (pregnancy) is the biggest mistake you have made, you won't be able to get back,'" says Rawlinson, who plans to keep running until the 2012 London Olympics. "I never thought it was a mistake. I have been clucky since I was 10 years old. I had met the love of my life, he was 35 and he didn't want to be a 45-year-old dad for his first one. And I want three or four so we had to start then or we wouldn't fit that many in!"

The sceptics brought out the iron in her. She has never shied away from hard training and even a growing belly wasn't going to get in her way. With the help of Chris, who won the 400m hurdles at the 2002 Commonwealth Games, a taxing but safe training regime was crafted.

"We were really diligent with diet and exercise and we had a good obstetrician who gave me regular scans so we were sure there was no harm to the baby," she explains. "I trained the entire way through, but if I train at 100 per cent now, I trained at 70 per cent during the pregnancy. I never ran to the point where I was ill, whereas now I run to the point where I am ill every time I train. All I wanted to do was keep my fitness up."

She does not pretend it was easy. "I didn't enjoy the last three months of training, it was disgusting trying to run around with a massive belly and feeling so uncomfortable." But the long-term goal of building a solid fitness base for this year's world championships and next year's Olympics drove her on.

On December 13 she did a big weights session in the gym, then went home and had labour-inducing raspberry leaf tea and a hot curry. The next morning she ran hard for 30 minutes and that afternoon Cornelis, a healthy eight pounds (3.6kg), was born. By Christmas Day she was doing a strenuous session on the steep hill that leads into the quiet cul-de-sac where the Rawlinsons live.
But as any new mother knows, keeping fit after the baby is harder than you might expect. As her body adjusted post-pregnancy, with ligaments softened and hormones going haywire, she was struck by repeated injury, including a serious foot problem that took 10 weeks to heal. That was when she thought the sceptics might be right. "The realisation kicked in that I might never run fast again. I was in such bad shape it was ridiculous."

But, as is her way, she persisted. The family moved camp to Chris's former bachelor cottage in Loughborough, England, and she ran her first race in Portugal in May. She shocked herself with excellent times, and dared to hope she could make the final at the world champs. Three months later, she had done that and much more.

For Rawlinson, who has had a fraught relationship with the Australian public, it was not just any win. While she tries not to care any more about public opinion, the supermum headlines were a welcome change from the "Jana drama" line that haunted her during the 2004 Athens Olympics, and again in 2006, before the Melbourne Commonwealth Games, when she was drawn into a public spat with her teammate, Tamsyn Lewis.

"She was portrayed negatively through no fault of her own in the PR battle between her and Tamsyn," says sports commentator and former Olympic long jumper David Culbert. "Tamsyn is a good media performer and played it beautifully and Jana was sucked into it. But now I believe she has restored the Australian public's confidence in her as a person. And I don't think the win had much to do with it, because she has always been a winner.

"She is a Rolls-Royce of an athlete - there are very few athletes like her in world sport. If she is fit and ready to race, she wins."

Culbert lists Rawlinson's achievements: world youth hurdles champion at 16, world junior 400m and 400m hurdles champion at 17 (while doing her HSC), Commonwealth hurdles champion at 19, world hurdles champion at 20 (the youngest ever in her event), and now twice world champion.

What mattered most was the way a calmer, more mature Rawlinson handled the build-up to Osaka and then her victory - she kept a low profile and spoke only to a few trusted people in the sporting media. Says Culbert: "It was the change of approach, to talking about her performances after they happen and not talking about them before they happen. So no previews, just reviews."

It was a very deliberate plan. Rawlinson says she learnt a harsh lesson by being too open, particularly at the Athens Games when her knee injury became a daily soap opera. "We made many mistakes when it comes to the media," she reflects. "I can say we made a lot of bad judgment calls with things we said or didn't say and it bit us on the backside countless times.

"I trusted people with too much information and I trusted they would decipher what was newsworthy. I didn't think I was big enough news. The only experience I had had with the media was after I won the world title in 2003 and they were awesome, everyone was nice, I didn't read a bad word, and that is how I expected it to be.

"I have always been a very open person. Open with my feelings and opinions. I trust so easily and therefore I have got myself into trouble in the past because I genuinely believe everybody is good, and when you have that belief, you don't put your guard up as much. You assume people will treat you the way you treat them, and that they aren't going to hurt you."

She can sense that she has regained some respect, but is not getting too caught up in it. "Even this year I have still had people saying they don't like me; we have come across web forums where people say things. But there is nothing I can do about it and realistically they don't know you," she shrugs.

Her husband, an affable man with a cheeky grin, has shielded her but also tried to harden her shell. "The biggest thing is Chris's influence because he really does not give an absolute s--t about what anybody thinks, so we are the opposite ends of the spectrum," she says. "I really care and he really doesn't care, so we meet somewhere in the middle and I can deal with things a lot better now."

And then there's motherhood. She is easygoing and playful with Cor, who was walking before he was 10 months old and appears to have inherited his parents' athletic genes. The experience has altered her priorities. If there were a public controversy now, her reaction would be completely different.

"We would just go home and stay completely out of it, whereas before I felt like you always had to defend yourself and I would get really upset. My reputation not only affects me now, it affects my family, so I don't want Cor growing up with people saying, 'Your mummy did this or that.'

"What I care about has changed in life, therefore I don't worry as much. I am much more worried about these two," she says, nodding at Chris and Cor, "than I am about someone external."

The supermum tag was "lovely" but one she says applies more aptly to other mums. "I met a woman the other day who has two sets of twins, and I think what she has done is harder than what I have done. I have had one little boy and I have an amazing support network of family behind me."

With a beloved baby and two world championship titles, what more does a girl want? Simple. An Olympic title in Beijing in 2008. "The Olympics is the be-all and end-all and I don't think about much else in terms of sport," she says.

Culbert says the spotlight on Rawlinson will intensify, as it did before Athens, and she needs to tread warily. "It is fantastic to have the Australian public recognising that Jana is one of our best athletes, in any sport. She deserves not to be treated like 'Jana drama' but to be treated like Jana the superstar she is. That is what has happened, and how she handled things this year has to be the template for next year."

She knows that better than anyone, so don't expect to hear too much from Rawlinson between now and next August. "I am scared, even 10 months away, but the race is going to come and I have got to conquer this one," she says. "It will be great. This will be one of those years that defines you as a person.