Once-bitten Jana Rawlinson to heal in private this Olympics
Jenny McAsey | June 07, 2008
IT is three weeks before the Athens Olympic Games and Jana Pittman is injured, undergoing knee surgery.
World 400m hurdles champion Jana Rawlinson tains in Sydney earlier this year.
Via a voracious media, the Australian public is along for the ride, bedside when she is recovering in hospital, an eyewitness when she discards the crutches.
Fast forward to 2008, two months before the Beijing Olympic Games. Jana Rawlinson is injured and about to receive emergency treatment on a toe that is so troublesome it has forced her to stop training and racing for at least the next 10 days.
The name might have changed since she married former UK hurdler Chris Rawlinson, but it is the same athlete, the same world champion who is Australia’s best hope for an athletics gold medal, and a similar injury challenge.
But let’s stop there. This time there is one significant difference. Four years on there are no photographs from the medical room, no daily updates exposing her frustration and anguish as she battles to be fit in time for the August Olympics. The Jana soap opera is no longer on the schedule.
This week Rawlinson revealed the details of her ongoing toe soreness and achilles tendon injuries, but it was only in a low-key phone hook-up where she remained upbeat about her chances in Beijing.
“I am actually really positive. What we are saying is we can still do this, we have a great support network, let’s try to work around it and make the statement when it comes to Beijing rather than racing now when I am not ready,” Rawlinson said.
“I can only look forward, I can’t look back at the fact that I haven’t had the best few months. I know personally off six to seven weeks hard training, I can still run well.”
At 25, Rawlinson is both wiser and more wary as a result of the harsh lessons she learnt from her Athens experience.
“We made many mistakes when it comes to the media. I have always been a very open person … I trusted people with too much information,” she said recently.
It not only taught Rawlinson to guard her privacy, but also showed she could overcome significant distractions and run on heart.
Described by former Olympic long jumper and athletics commentator David Culbert as a “Rolls-Royce” among athletes, in Athens Rawlinson finished a brave fifth in the 400m hurdles final three weeks after surgery.
Her coach from that time, Phil King, said yesterday she should draw on that performance to calm her fears now.
“I passed the comment to Jana that in Athens she had an operation 21 days prior to her race,” King said. "I said I would rather this situation, where the Olympics are 11 weeks away and the requirement is simply that she rests.
“I actually believe a bit of rest will be the best workout session she can have now.”
Rawlinson said she was also inspired by the fact King’s wife, Debbie Flintoff-King, was training in Australia and did not race for seven weeks before winning a gold medal in the 400m hurdles at the 1988 Seoul Olympics.
If Rawlinson needs any more evidence she can do well on limited preparation, she only has to go back to last year when she won the world 400m hurdles title less than eight months after giving birth to her first child, a son Cornelis.
Then, post-pregnancy, she sustained a serious foot injury which meant she trained for less than four months before the world championships in Osaka.
“If I hadn’t have gone through what happened last year, probably about four or five weeks ago I would have pulled the pin on this year because I would have thought, ‘How could you get into shape in such short time?’ But I missed so much training last year it was ridiculous and still managed to win the worlds,” Rawlinson said from her base in England.
“Maybe I won with my heart. When it comes down to championships you really have to have it in your heart and mind whether you think you are going to win or not, and I do know I have that.”
While Rawlinson has some trepidation now, if she can get to the Olympic start line in reasonable shape, she will be a medal contender. Once she is on the track, her insecurities dissipate.
“She has a history of competing against the odds, it almost goes part and parcel with her resume and it is an ability that very few have,” King says.
In the meantime Rawlinson is putting her faith in Ebonie Scase, a physiotherapist from the Australian Institute of Sport, who will arrive in England on Monday to provide intensive treatment.
Scase helped Rawlinson with the same painful toe problem - it limits her range of movement when she runs - in the lead-up to last year’s worlds.