This is an ABC podcast.

Hi, Lynne Malcolm here with an All In The Mind podcast extra for you.

You may have heard some of my conversation with Yana Pittman in the most recent episode of All In The Mind,

in which we looked at the challenges we face when we go through changes and transitions in our

lives. Yana Pittman was an Olympic athlete for Australia in both athletics and bobsled.

She's a two-time world champion and four-time Commonwealth champion

in the 400-meters hurdles events. She then transferred to a new career in medicine, and now she's a

junior doctor at Blacktown Hospital in Sydney. In her autobiography called Just Another Hurtle, she tells her compelling

story of how she's overcome many hurdles in her life, both physical and personal.

We begin by talking about how her passion for athletics began. I mean, I loved athletics,

and I certainly loved the opportunities I had to

represent my beautiful country all over the world and to have a wonderful career in sport. But

in all truth, as a young, young person, actually all I wanted to be was a doctor. So it was

almost like a sidetrack career pathway to go down that sports avenue. And I think a lot of it was

because I really enjoyed the accolades my

parents gave me and I really loved, you know, dad taking a day off work to come and watch me run.

So I think it was a lot of extrinsically driven aspirations. But, you know, I always wanted to

make the Olympics. And I remember when I was only like nine years old when they announced the

Sydney Olympics would be in Australia. And I thought that would be pretty incredible, but obviously not really having any idea what that meant and how hard it was

to actually become an Olympic athlete. Probably wasn't until I was about 13 or 14 that I set the goals

of actually making the Olympics and then soon they became, you know, winning the Commonwealth Games

and then winning the Olympics and it sort of escalates, I guess, as you progress up the ladder

...