
Content warning: This post deals with eating disorders and miscarriage and may be triggering for some readers.
Dr Jana Pittman is arguably one of the most underestimated women in Australia.
She's a successful Summer Olympian, Winter Olympian, a two-time World Champion, and a four-time Commonwealth Games gold medallist.
On top of that, Pittman is a doctor, soon-to-be mother-of-six, and she most recently wowed the nation when she took on Channel 7's brutal SAS Australia course.
Watch Jana Pittman on SBS Insight. Post continues after video.
Her progression into stardom came from a childhood where Pittman saw herself as an outcast among her peers.
"I've always felt a bit weird, quirky in that I'm extremely driven and studied all the time," she told the ABC.
"I talk really fast and I guess I'm not to everybody's taste. I struggled to fit in. I have always struggled with self-esteem."
On the track though, she was a different person.
Her one dream, despite becoming the best of the best, was for her own father to be able to take a day off work.
“My father is an amazing man and he worked so many hours in the day. He’s over 70 years old now and still works every single day on a building site. He’s an engineer but he also builds houses,” she told The Leadership Lessons.
“It was my way of saying: right, I’m going to make my dad have a day off and he’s going to come and enjoy the track with me. It literally started just to impress my dad and then somehow around the age of 14 or 15, I started looking like I had a little bit of potential.
“I ended up qualifying for the Olympics in Sydney, in my home country, when I was only 15 years of age.”
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