Jana Pittman is an Australian former athlete. During her athletic career Pittman specialised in the 400 metres run and 400-metre hurdles events. She is a two-time world champion in the 400 m hurdles, from 2003 and 2007. She also won the gold medal in this event at the 2002 and 2006 Commonwealth Games and was part of Australia's winning 4 × 400 metres relay teams at both events.
Pittman won the 400 m hurdles at the 1999 World Youth Championships in Athletics in Bydgoszcz and became treble champion in 200 m, 400 m and 400 m hurdles at the national championships of that year. In 2000, she became the first woman ever to win the 400 m flat and hurdles double at any IAAF or IOC championships – in this case, the 2000 World Junior Championships in Santiago (Chile).
Pittman is one of only ten athletes (along with Valerie Adams, Usain Bolt, Veronica Campbell-Brown, Jacques Freitag, Yelena Isinbayeva, Kirani James, Dani Samuels, David Storl and Faith Kipyegon) to win world championships at the youth, junior, and senior level of an athletic event.
Pittman also competed in the two-woman bobsleigh at the 2014 Winter Olympics, making her the first Australian female athlete to compete in both the Summer and Winter Olympic games.
Just before the Athens Olympics, Pittman tore her right meniscus during a warm-up for a track meet in Zurich, where she had been favoured to win the 400 m hurdles event. After undergoing surgery in London only one week before the start of the games, she ran 5th in the final.
In January 2013, whilst training for the Sochi Winter Olympic Games, Pittman began studying medicine at Western Sydney University. She received her medical MBBS degree from this university in 2019.
She is an ambassador for the Australian Cervical Cancer Foundation (ACCF), having been treated for the precancerous condition, cervical intraepithelial neoplasia, in 2014.
Pittman was part of the cast of the second season of SAS Australia in 2021. Dr Pittman featured in an episode of Australian Story on ABC-TV 'The Last Hurdle' in November 2021.
