Hundreds of property industry members ‘fall in love all over again’ with Jana Pittman at Zango event

Before the World Athletics Championships in Paris in 2003, hurdler Jana Pittman came face to face with her rival, Yuliya Pechonkina, in the ‘call room’.

Yuliya was a 6’ 2’’ Russian with formidable race times. She was the best in the world, and Jana fully expected to lose to Yuliya in the 400m hurdle event.

When the pair came face to face in the call room, Yuliya shadowed Jana around the room. She sat close enough to Jana to touch her and, at one point, sat beside her, and stared her in the face for minutes on end.

“She was trying to psyche me out,” Jana says.

“She was this superstar of an athlete and I was just a 19-year-old Aussie kid who was running more than half a second slower than she was.

“But you know what? She was scared of me.

“She had the same fear that all of us do.”

Fear. resilience, setting big goals and even uterine transplants were all on the table at the latest Zango presents event in Canberra on Tuesday morning. Jana Pittman, now a medical doctor and specialist in reproductive medicine, shared her story with a room of 250 from Canberra’s real estate industry.

It was the first time Jana, the first woman to represent Australia at both the Summer and Winter Olympics, had ever spoken in the ACT.

The industry sat in thrilled silence as Jana took them blow by blow through the emotion of what it’s like to compete in hurdles at world level. She later described how the biggest failures of her life – including being too injured to compete in not one or two but three Olympic Games in a row – turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to her.

“If you fail in life, which inevitably you will, it will lead you in a different direction,” Jana said.

“And it will lead you to something that's way more extraordinary than the first thing ever would have been.

“So yes, I'm glad I lost at the Olympics. One hundred per cent. And don't get me wrong, I would have loved to bring home a gold, but I wouldn't give up what I do now for anything.”

Jana, a mum of six, explained how the bumble bee had been a symbol of inspiration for her since the age of just eight.

“Bumble bees are not designed to fly,” she said.

“Its body is too heavy for its light wings; wings that should not be able to keep it in the air.

“Bumble bees refuse to accept their limitations. It flies in spite of what it’s been told it cannot do.

“It knows its strength.”

Jana Pittman was the third speaker to appear on stage in Canberra as part of the Zango presents series.

Previous speakers have included entrepreneur and economist Mark Bouris, and world champion cyclist Anna Meares. The series has become a staple on the calendar of the local property industry.

“Ask anyone in the room how it felt to spend a morning with Jana and they’ll tell you it was just incredible,” Zango General Manager Karen Ligdopoulos says.

“Our events are just one of the ways we say to agents and to the entire real estate industry that Zango completely has your back.

“We know it’s a challenging time out there at the moment, and to offer a speaker who, like Zango, wants to completely change the game is beyond special to us.”