Jana Drama#13: Lewis Will Have Nothing To Do With Her Ever Again (Lucky Jana)

Moment of protest … Jana Pittman and Tamsyn Lewis talk to officials about the England team.

By Jano Gibson

April 3, 2006 - 8:20PM

Instead of bringing them together, gold has driven an even deeper wedge between bickering Australian athletes Jana Pittman and Tamsyn Lewis.

Lewis has vowed never to have anything to do with her fierce rival again after Pittman wrote to England’s athletes saying she was embarrassed by her teammate’s protest which led to the English being disqualified and Australia being handed the 4 x 400 metres relay gold at last month’s Commonwealth Games.

Lewis took their feud, which had seemingly calmed after their controversial win, to further depths on radio today.

“I’ve had an absolute gutful,” Lewis told MMM radio in Melbourne.

"I was willing to let it ride and let the finger be pointed at me and accept the blame, but for her to turn around and wipe her hands of it, while pointing her finger at me, is harsh.

"I don’t understand the girl’s motive - never have, never will.

:rolleyes: "Quite frankly after this, I want nothing to do with her.

:stuck_out_tongue: “I’m moving back up to the 800s and I don’t want to have anything to do with her ever again.”

In her letter, Pittman apologised to the English and offered to give them her gold medal, but Australia’s head athletics coach Max Binnington says she has no reason to apologise for the farce which Athletics Australia and Commonwealth Games chiefs wish would just go away.

Binnington also confirmed Lewis’ claim that both she and Pittman had approached officials after the race to protest that England’s Natasha Danvers-Smith had stepped into the wrong lane at the second changeover.

While AA will seek changes to the rule, Binnington insists the result of the race was fair.
“I’m not really sure what she’s apologising for,” Binnington said.

"We’ve all been in teams which have lost races for breaking the rules for whatever reason.

"I don’t know whether embarrassed is the right word, but it’s a bit of a pain, we’d be happier if it went away.

"The continuation of it is not doing anyone any favours, including the English, but they know they were disqualified for breaking the rules, not because of any protest that Jana and Tamsyn may have made.

"The athletes know the rule, you can bet your bottom dollar the English coaches would have told their runners ‘don’t mess up the order’.

“At the end of the day, it was the responsibility of the English girl to make sure she stayed in order.”

Following yesterday’s revelations on ABC television about Pittman’s letter, the Australian Commonwealth Games Association issued a release today defending the disqualification.

The ACGA said AA would seek a review of the rules to insert “some element of discretion allowed by the referee.”

Binnington admitted England’s breach had no bearing on the result, but said handing officials discretionary powers only created more controversy.

“It’s difficult when you give officials discretion, some people will agree and some won’t,” Binnington said.

“At the moment the rule is there, it’s black and white.”

While saying it was also disappointed in the outcome of the race and that England would “have been deserving champions”, the ACGA said the track referee had seen England break the rules.

“As such the English team would have been disqualified irrespective of any comment made by an Australian team member,” the statement said.

fox sports other sports story
ROSEMARY HAYWARD IS ATTRACTIVE, PICTURE VIA LINK

http://foxsports.news.com.au/story/0,8659,18716076-23218,00.html

Relay anchor to hold gold
By Damian Barrett
April 5, 2006

ROSEMARY Hayward, who anchored Australia’s controversial 4x400m relay team at the Commonwealth Games, has no intention of following Jana Pittman’s lead and offering her gold medal to disqualified England.

Stand … Hayward (l) will not hand back her medal. Pic: Sara Nixon

Unlike teammates Pittman and Tamsyn Lewis, Hayward, until yesterday, had maintained a public silence on the team’s contentious win.

Hayward said offering the medal to England, which won by 10 metres but was disqualified after Lewis and Pittman alerted officials to an illegal changeover, would be futile.

“We all got our medals engraved together, so I’m not sure if the English would actually like a gold medal with our surnames on it,” she said.

"The materialistic thing about it is the medal. To me, the medal doesn’t mean much, more the result. We didn’t do anything wrong to get it.

“The way I look at it is rules are rules, and it’s not as if we were just walking down the street and stole the gold medal. It’s not as if we were undeserving recipients.”

Australia’s promotion from silver to gold in the relay inflamed a spiteful relationship with Pittman and Lewis and infuriated the public.

Lewis claimed the day after the race that all members of the team, including Caitlin Willis, were consulted before she and Pittman approached officials to protest.

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Hayward said yesterday she was in no state at the completion of the event to remember if a meeting was held.
“In all honesty, I had just finished running a 400m, and I was hands on knees, and it all happened very quickly,” she said.

“I do not know what happened, even in our victory lap. It was all a blur. I can’t say yes and I can’t say no, because she may have and I just don’t remember it.”

Despite clearly enjoying herself in a victory lap and medal presentation after her team’s protest was deemed successful, Pittman has since attempted to distance herself from the controversy.

She wrote to the English team on the weekend, offering to hand over her medal.

“Jana was feeling quite bad about it, which is understandable, we all were,” Hayward said.

"Jana is quite good friends with (England runner) Natasha (Danvers-Smith), so she probably has more of a personal interest in it.

"I just want it to be laid to rest. (Jana) didn’t want it to be about her and Tamsyn, she was quite conscious about making it a team of four, which was considerate. But it hasn’t really worked out that way, which is fine.

"I have nothing bad to say about Jana, she helped me out heaps by letting me run last.

“I think her intentions are always good, but sometimes she is misunderstood.”

Protest un-Australian

05apr06
STEVE Moneghetti and Cathy Freeman yesterday supported Jana Pittman’s decision to hand over her Commonwealth Games 4x400 relay gold medal to the English team.

Moneghetti said the disqualification of the English team on a technical breach was farcical.

“It’s very hard for us to judge but (the protest) to me would seem un-Australian,” he said. Freedman agreed the move by Pittman to hand over her medal was a nice gesture.

“It sounds like her heart was in the right place,” she said.

Moneghetti said Pittman’s medal haul meant she could afford to give one away. “Jana won two gold medals – she can probably afford to give one away because she won two,” he said.

Tamsyn Lewis and Jana Pittman have buried the hatchet - again.

Lewis says Pittman called her from New Zealand, where the Commonwealth golden girl was honeymooning with husband Chris Rawlinson, to make peace.

“That phone call made everything better,” Lewis has told New Idea magazine.

“I feel so happy it’s all over - I couldn’t handle anymore bitterness.”

The truce comes after Lewis said last week she’d “had an absolute gutful” and didn’t want to have “anything to do with her (Pittman) ever again.”

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That outburst was inspired by Pittman’s attempt to make up with England’s 4x400m relay team after they controversially lost the Commonwealth Games gold medal on a protest by the Australian team featuring Pittman and Lewis.

Pittman wrote to English athletics officials and offered to hand over her gold medal.

England athletics team head coach Brad McStravick said that in her letter of apology Pittman had “blamed it on Tamsyn going to the officials and pointing out the fact that our girl was in the wrong place”.

Now Lewis says they have made up and agreed to move forward with their respective careers.

“Jana told me she’d finally had time after the wedding to sit down and read news reports on the internet,” Lewis told the New Idea issue which goes on sale Monday.

"She was shocked to see that she was supposed to have blamed me in her letter. She said it wasn’t true and she was sorry I was upset.

“It was nice of her to ring me, especially on her honeymoon, and now a really rough time looks like being in the past for both of us.”

The ceasefire follows a previous truce announced by Lewis in New Idea last month in the lead up to the Commonwealth Games when comments in the media had fired both parties up

[amazing how it took a paid article in new idea to bury the hatchet] :eek: