Australian politician had legs broken to become taller

An Australian politician has gone to extraordinary lengths to be taken seriously by her peers: she has had her legs broken and stretched to become 3in (8cm) taller.

“A lot of young females have insecurities about their weight or their nose; mine was my height,” said Hajnal Ban, 31, a councillor with Logan City council in Queensland.

After nine months of excruciating pain, the councillor became a “normal” 5ft 4in.



Ms Ban was taunted at school and feared that her height would damage her credibility as she entered the legal profession and later went into local politics.

So she went to the Ilizarov orthopaedic clinic in Kurgan, Russia, and paid surgeons A$40,000 (£19,000) to break both her legs in four places and stretch them slowly for 1mm every day for nine months. Eventually she grew from 154cm (just under 5ft 1in) to 162cm.

Ms Ban, who was born in Israel and is of Hungarian origin, has lived in Australia since she was a child. She ran unsuccessfully for the conservative National Party during the federal election in 2007 and has been a local councillor for three years. She had the surgery when she was a 23-year-old barrister but Australian media only latched on to her medical history this week. Ms Ban said that she did not want to be remembered as “the girl who got her legs lengthened”.