‘Will this be the day that breaks me’: Erin McNaught’s toughest battle
By the time former Miss Universe Australia Erin McNaught left Channel 7’s SAS Australia she had two torn muscles, three bulging discs and severe bruising and swelling over her body. This is how she made it
QLD News
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Despite the brutal toll it took on her body, model Erin McNaught was determined to battle through SAS Australia to show her young sons that women are about more than just beauty.
By the time the former Miss Universe Australia left the Channel 7 show – which sees celebrities complete the Special Forces selection process – she had two torn muscles, including her rotator cuff, three bulging discs in her back and severe bruising and swelling over her body.
A fall from a helicopter also left her concussed and partially blind for about five hours.
“It was a lot, but I pushed myself that hard,” McNaught, 38, said.
“Every morning I would wake up and think, ‘Will this be the day that breaks me’, but I’m really stubborn. I felt like I had something to prove. I didn’t want to be the model who gets to day two and can’t hack it.”
After living in the UK, McNaught returned to Brisbane with husband, British rapper Example, and their sons – Evander, 5, and Ennio, 3 – at the end of 2018 with a goal to restart her career.
“I wanted to reclaim some of my own identity and find out what I was capable of outside of being a mum,” she said.
“Then I started thinking about being a positive role model for women and girls and my young sons.
McNaught said becoming a mum had changed her priorities, saying she wouldn’t have signed on to SAS Australia earlier in her career.
“From day one I look hideous. If I had done the show 10 years ago I would have struggled with that aspect just out of pure vanity,” she said.
“But at the age I’m at now, I didn’t care.”
