Looks like former 400 hurdles world champ Jana Pittman won’t be racing again this year. Word is she’s pregnant, due in December. Married Chris Ralwinson in late March.
Congratulations to both. Hope Jana makes good in Beijing.
Maybe it is premature a bit but if the info is correct we have seen the best Jana has to offer.
Bejing will be just a distant dream for her then…
http://www.smh.com.au/news/sport/pittman-takes-pregnancy-in-her-stride/2006/06/14/1149964608574.html
Pittman takes pregnancy in her stride
>
> Jessica Halloran
> June 15, 2006
>
> Illustration: Cathy Wilcox
> AdvertisementAdvertisement
>
> AMID all the drama of the Commonwealth Games, Jana Pittman succeeded
> in achieving her two great goals - winning gold and getting pregnant.
>
> The hurdler revealed yesterday that she had conceived with her
> husband, Chris Rawlinson, during the Games and is just over 12 weeks
> pregnant.
>
> Pittman also announced yesterday her ambition to win gold in the
> 400-metre hurdles at the World Athletics Championships next year, and
> at the Beijing Olympics in 2008.
>
> Rawlinson, who is also her coach, said she was still on the track
> training. The couple, who married in March, were incredibly happy, he
> said.
>
> “It was a long-term goal of both myself and Jana that we would try for
> a child during the 2006 Commonwealth Games, with hopes of Jana giving
> birth in late 2006,” Rawlinson said.
>
> "Our timing was so there would be no disruption to her long-term
> athletics goals of winning the 2007 world champs and the 2008 Olympics.
>
> “We were extremely lucky, considering the small time frame we set
> ourselves for conception, that we were successful.”
>
> His 23-year-old wife, who now prefers to go by the name of Jana
> Rawlinson, had an ultrasound on Tuesday. “We saw the baby move for the
> first time on a scan, when it was displaying its athletic prowess,
> kicking about,” he said.
>
> After winning gold at the Commonwealth Games, Pittman said she had no
> other reason to keep competing this year and would use the rest to
> recuperate.
>
> Rawlinson believes the timing of her pregnancy will prolong her
> athletic career. “This choice is not unusual for athletes, and the
> recent resurgence of [the sprinter] Marion Jones highlights this in
> practice,” he said. “We and our medical advisers are confident that
> this is a good decision for Jana’s long-term targets.”
>
> The two are at present based in Britain for the European athletics season.
>
> But while they announced their happiness yesterday, one Olympic great,
> Raelene Boyle, took a different view of Pittman’s pregnancy.
>
> “I am shocked,” Boyle said. "And I’m very surprised that at her age,
> that she wanted to have a baby with the World Athletics Championships
> in 2007 and the Olympic Games coming up.
>
> "I would have thought, as a professional athlete, she would be focused
> on these events before having a child.
>
> "But having a child doesn’t mean the end of a great athletic career.
> Many women who have become mothers have gone on to win medals.
>
> “It seems a strange move to me, but each to their own. The Jana
> journey gets interesting again.”
>
> Pittman said she would like to bring up a family in Australia. Before
> the Games she said she was being driven out of Australia and planned
> to move to England, blaming the negative publicity she received after
> a spat with a fellow athlete, Tamsyn Lewis.
A baby for Jana
Email Print Normal font Large font James Button and Jessica Halloran
June 15, 2006
Parents-to-be: Jana Pittman and husband Chris Rawlinson.
Photo: Jesse Marlow
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AdvertisementMARCH turned out to be a golden month for champion hurdler Jana Pittman. She triumphed at the Commonwealth Games, married her coach Chris Rawlinson, had the braces taken off her teeth and probably conceived her first child.
“Mate, she is over the moon when we found out,” Rawlinson said yesterday, revealing that his 23-year-old wife is just over 12 weeks pregnant.
“She was crying on the phone when she told me. I thought at first something else had happened,” he said, referring to the injuries and dramas that have dogged the emotional athlete in the past two years. To be indelicate, was the child conceived the night of her stunning win in the 400 metres hurdles at the MCG in the Commonwealth Games?
“We had started trying anyway so I can’t really pin-point the date,” Rawlinson said coyly. The doctor put conception at “somewhere around our wedding day”.
Their child is due in December. “We saw the baby move for the first time yesterday on a scan when it was displaying its athletic prowess, kicking about,” Rawlinson said.
Rawlinson thinks her pregnancy is a double blessing because it will give her body time to recover from her injuries and be in top shape for the World Championships in Japan in August next year and the Beijing Olympic Games a year after that.
A rehabilitation year, after three seasons of injuries culminating in Pittman’s knee injury during the Athens Olympics, will give her a perfect opportunity to prolong her career even until the 2012 London Games, Rawlinson said.
It is not necessarily an opinion shared by former champion runner Raelene Boyle. “I am shocked,” Boyle said yesterday.
"And I’m very surprised that at her age that she wanted to have a baby with the World Athletics Championships in 2007 and the Olympics games coming up.
“I would have thought as a professional athlete she would be focused on these events before having a child.”
But having a child doesn’t mean the end of a great athletic career. Many women who have become mothers have gone on to win medals.
“It seems a strange move to me but each to their own. The Jana journey gets interesting again.” Boyle advised Pittman to end her spat with fellow runner Tamsyn Lewis during the Games.
Rawlinson disagrees with her view though. “It was a long-term goal of both myself and Jana that we would try for a child during the 2006 Commonwealth Games with hopes of Jana giving birth in late 2006. Our timing was so there would be no disruption to her long-term athletics goals of winning the 2007 world champs and the 2008 Olympics.”
Pittman, who is training at Loughborough University in Britain, will not compete again this year but will leave the track to work on bikes and in the pool once she starts gaining weight.
Rawlinson said his wife was in a very happy time of her life, and winning gold in Melbourne had given her a huge boost — “she got rid of this nightmare from Athens”, when she finished fifth in the 400 metres hurdles after sustaining an injury.
The couple plan to return to Australia in the next two months and move from Melbourne to Sydney, where Pittman’s mother Jackie lives.
Let’s just hope the birthing process goes easily for Jana.
Athletes are usually very optimistic and rarely consider alternative scenarios, so Jana probably would be thinking of establishing a family of two kids or more by the time she hangs up her spikes, having made her second $ million and finishing her PhD (in drama 
) the night before she wins her second Olympic gold medal in London.
But what if she needs a caesarian section delivery? Things could be problematic thereafter. One Olympic finalist I worked with had to deliver by caesarian surgery and suffered so much thereafter from lower-back injuries related to abdominal weaknesses (due mostly to the knife job) it virtually ended her international career.
Not all women return from childbirth stronger and faster. Many do not return at all.
And in Pittman’s case that’s OK because she’s already had a successful career by almost anyone’s standards. But perhaps not by her own …?
Sounds like at the moment, at least, she is happy. Apparently aesthetically it is providing some benefits she has not seen for some time and all without the need for surgury…
So long as there are no complications i guess it will give her the opportunity to recover from the naggin injury (can’t remember what it is) she picked up in Melbourne.