Jana Pittman became famous around the world for her power of speed, but now she's honing another power.
After challenges like a forced career change and a marriage breakdown, Pittman has learnt how to turn disappointment into a lesson that builds her up and makes her stronger.
"You can't change [things that don't work out]", she tells ABC RN's Life Matters.
"You can't turn back the clock and redo those events. You can only learn from them."
Pittman says she's become more resilient from "living in that discomfort of failure".
"The more often you put yourself out there and unfortunately things don't go to plan — and you realise you survive it — the stronger you become."
And Pittman says it's a lesson anyone can benefit from.
'Acute years of discomfort'
Today Sydney-based Pittman is 40, working as a doctor and a happily remarried mother of six children.
It's a long way from the heartbroken reigning world champion who, in 2004, had her campaign for Olympic gold in Athens snatched from her by a knee injury.
"All I ever wanted to do was run for our country," says Pittman, who had spent years trying to fulfil a dream to bring home gold. Indeed, she qualified for the Sydney Olympics at just 15.
So when the dream ended over a decade later, "it knocked me for six", she says.
"It was quite a shock to the system."
Pittman continued to run for years. But by 2012 her "flame was out", she writes in her new book, Enough: Accept Yourself Just The Way You Are.
When an athlete's career ends, there's often a feeling of "unfinished business", Pittman says. "It's a hard space to sit with."
"And definitely a lot of us go into depression or have some sort of really acute years of discomfort where you try and find where you're supposed to be."
The key to finding a way out of that is having more than one thing in your life, she says. It's something she advises the athletes she now mentors.
And it's advice she extends to others, too.
"It's not just for sport. It's for anything in life … When you throw your heart and soul into something that you love and dream so much about [it's great to have] something that can cushion the blow if it doesn't go to plan," she says.
"It means you have something else to divert your passion into. And I think it's incredibly important."
'I didn't feel good enough'
Pittman hasn't always been so good at managing disappointment.
She's had to think deeply about what motivates her — and has tried to ditch the drivers that aren't helpful.
"Some of my chasing success definitely came about because I didn't feel good enough," she says.
Pittman says she's always had an "inner desire and inner strength to try and get the best out of myself", but in the past she's also found herself looking for "extrinsic validation".
So when the media turned on her in 2004, just two weeks before the Athens Olympics, and dubbed her Drama Jana after she threw her crutches walking out of a London hospital, "it definitely affected me", she says.
"There were periods where I was very nervous around public opinions and perceptions. And it definitely fuelled my inner critic through most of my 20s.
"You start really second guessing who you are as a person and wondering whether you could have done things differently ... If I spoke more gently or if I was a cookie-cutter style athlete and said all the right things, maybe I'd be received [better]."
She believes 20 years ago "loud, proud" women weren't well received in Australia but argues "it's definitely changed in the last two or three years".
"I've seen a real shift in the way I've been received in the media," she says. Though, she still held "some fear" about how the public would respond to her 2021 appearance on TV show SAS.
But she's worked hard at pushing away concerns about what others think, and she doesn't worry anymore about needing to change.
"My greatest success is actually being comfortable with being really authentic and owning some very unusual personality traits; being comfortable with being called Drama Jana," she says.
"I used to think that was a negative and think that my passion and my dramatic nature was a turn-off for people, [but] it's actually what makes me successful.
"It allows me to move past adversity and heartache quickly, and be that driven, resilient, passionate, determined person that has certainly held me very well in life. It's not something to shy away from."
An 'extraordinary' future
Her determination allowed her to pursue her interest in medicine, after she'd retired from sport, and helped her to push past failing an entrance exam and sit it again.
"I remember sitting there thinking … I can shy away and use the excuse of being an athlete for 20 years, and therefore, that's why I didn't do medicine, or I can … sit the entrance exam as many times as need be to get in, if it's what I want to do. Just keep facing that fear and giving it a shot," she says.
In 2020, she qualified as a doctor and Pittman says she's "incredibly grateful" to be working in a field she loves, maybe even more than sport.
"Every day I get to go and help birth babies [or] sit with women who have gone through cancer diagnoses … I'm only very junior as a doctor at the moment, but the future of hopefully being an obstetrician gynaecologist for the next 30 years is extraordinary," Pittman says.
And what of those who teased her back in 2004? Well, she's discovered how to leverage that experience to her advantage, too.
"Negative media has given me a huge public profile that now allows me to speak about things that other people probably don't feel they can," she says.
She gives the examples of incontinence, human papillomavirus (HPV), cervical cancer, pap smears, miscarriage and endometriosis.
"I get to talk about things that I really think we need to give a voice to."
RN in your inbox
Get more stories that go beyond the news cycle with our weekly newsletter.
