From AFL, rugby union and cricket to aerial skiing, equestrian sports and speed-skating, Australian sport has produced some of the toughest nuts around. They are the people who played on through injury or overcame potentially catastrophic setbacks to inspire a sports-loving nation.

Through a series of revealing interviews, author Mick Colliss explores the extraordinary character of these outstanding athletes, and reveals the mental and physical fortitude it took for them to carry on when the rest of us would have been carried off