When James Cracknell was asked to appear on BBC1’s Strictly Come Dancing a year ago, his wife Beverley Turner vetoed it.
‘She made some comments about not wanting a “Russian fa**y” in my face every week. This year it was my decision,’ says James, who separated from Beverley, with whom he has three children, Croyde, 16, Kiki, ten, and eight-year-old Trixie, in November last year.
‘When I told her I was going to do it, she said: “We both know your dancing ability. You’ll be appalling and won’t be there very long.” ’
Last week, the Olympic rower became the first of this year’s crop of celebrity contestants to be voted off the show after achieving the lowest ever score in Strictly history for his jive.
James Cracknell said his year at Cambridge is, he says, responsible for this newfound confidence — that and the new woman in his life, Jordan Connell, a 34-year-old American, who shares his newly rented flat in West London. Pictured together
For those of us who watched his partner Luba Mushtuk coax him through his dance moves, it was excruciating.
Judge Bruno Tonioli likened him to a ‘galumphing Godzilla’, while Craig Revel Horwood awarded him just two points for his stiff-as-an-oar tango, confiding, ‘you get two points for putting your shoes on’.
To be fair, James cannot hear musical beats and is ‘not a great learner’ after he suffered terrible head injuries nine years ago when he was hit by the wing mirror of a truck while cycling across America. The damage to the frontal lobe of his brain affected his personality and, eventually, his marriage as Beverley despaired of life on what she calls ‘Planet James’.
Their divorce is, he says, ‘amicable, although it varies between how amicable’ and he continues to respect Beverley. So why on earth, didn’t he listen to her?
‘You’ve got three kids at independent schools, a house to run, a full-time nanny and, when you’re a student [James spent the past year studying evolutionary and behavioural science as a postgraduate at Cambridge, where he rowed for the university in the Boat Race] your earning potential drops.
Jordan, who met James at Cambridge last October when she arrived to study for an MBA, is a smart young woman who is ‘ridiculously happy’ to have met James
‘This was also the first time I felt confident enough to do something I wasn’t very good at and not be afraid of looking stupid.’
James is, by nature, a shy, introverted man. Or, as Beverley once said shortly after they met in 2000, ‘show me a room of Olympic medallists and I’ll show you a room of insecure people.’
His year at Cambridge is, he says, responsible for this newfound confidence — that and the new woman in his life, Jordan Connell, a 34-year-old American, who shares his newly rented flat in West London.
When she walks in, James lights up like the Strictly glitterball.
Jordan, who met James at Cambridge last October when she arrived to study for an MBA, is a smart young woman who is ‘ridiculously happy’ to have met James.
This is the first interview she has given since her romance with James began shortly before Christmas. After winning the Boat Race, James travelled with Jordan to her native New York where he met her mother Rosemarie, who works on Wall Street. ‘She really liked James. Who wouldn’t? She said she’s happy I’m happy.
‘I like to think I make him happy, too. When internet trolls were making cruel comments about his dancing and ‘wooden personality’ on Strictly I thought, “How can you put that? You don’t know him.” I know he feels things very deeply.
‘I feel so strongly about bullying online. Try sitting down with the person you love when they’re upset by what’s being said because their children will read it. James does have an amazing personality. He’s funny and kind. It’s the little things he does like going out to track down a bar of Hershey’s chocolate for me, which is special because it’s so hard to find in the UK.’
After winning the Boat Race, James travelled with Jordan to her native New York where he met her mother Rosemarie, who works on Wall Street. ‘She really liked James. Who wouldn’t? She said she’s happy I’m happy
Jordan was in the audience at last week’s live show with James’s close friend and fellow adventurer Ben Fogle to see him voted off.
James continues: ‘She just said, “I’m really proud of you. You really went for it.” So you can’t regret that, although I didn’t feel a million dollars on the self-esteem side waking up the next morning.
‘I genuinely felt for Luba who put so much into it and I was really sorry for the girls [his daughters] who were looking forward to coming to the dance studio this week. They were disappointed about that. So was I. I thought it would be nice to include them in something I was doing. You can’t really include them in rowing.
‘How the kids feel is the most important thing for Bev and me. I’ve got to reform a long-term relationship with them that really works for all of us. It’ll take time over the next few months to sort it out. The sooner I get this place up and running the better.’
James has only recently moved into his three-bedroom flat. Beverley packed his share of 17 years of married life into goodness knows how many plastic boxes and he doesn’t have a clue how he’ll fit it all in.
James decided to rent here because it’s a stone’s throw from the family home of which he is no longer a part following his decision to study at Cambridge and compete in the Boat Race.
The day after his superhuman victory on the Thames — at 47, James was double the age of many of the crew — Beverley eviscerated him in a newspaper article, writing that going to university to study full-time and train for the race was ‘an absolute dereliction of parenting and marital duty’.
‘That ferocity, when it’s in your corner, is great,’ says James. ‘That was one of the things I was attracted to and loved her for. I wouldn’t have made the recovery I have without her fire. It’s not so nice when it’s not in your corner, but you can’t fall in love with an opinionated woman and then moan when she has an opinion.
‘It hurts but it’s on me as well. I wasn’t the best husband in the world. I wanted to go to Cambridge to get academic credibility for the work I was doing in public health [James worked with conservative think tank the Centre for Social Justice on ways of tackling childhood obesity and has been on the candidates’ list to be a Conservative MP since 2014.]
‘Beverley didn’t share my desire for me to go into politics. I don’t think she liked the idea of being a politician’s wife.
James cannot hear musical beats and is ‘not a great learner’ after he suffered terrible head injuries nine years ago when he was hit by the wing mirror of a truck while cycling across America. The damage to the frontal lobe of his brain affected his personality and, eventually, his marriage as Beverley Turner despaired of life on what she calls ‘Planet James’. Pictured: James and Beverley in 2015
‘Going to Cambridge was a last-chance saloon, in my head, to get her to see me away from the prism of the accident, but it was a bit late for our marriage.’
When Jordan met James on the first day of term at his college, Peterhouse, she didn’t have a clue he was a feted Olympian or that he’d suffered a brain injury.
‘One of the best things about going to Cambridge was, let’s face it, a lot of the students weren’t born when I won the Olympics. I really enjoyed meeting people who took me as I am,’ says James.
‘To be honest, with Jordan the conversation was so easy and it was so nice to hang out with someone who had no preconceptions of who you were before.
‘The reality is that Jordan’s the first . . .’ He turns to her. ‘You’re the only other person I’ve kissed [apart from Beverley] this millennium. You can’t say that, you scarlet woman,’ he teases. Jordan laughs.
Of course, when James started at Cambridge he was a 47-year-old married man with a young family. He won’t be the first middle-aged man to yearn for a carefree youth. Was it a midlife crisis?
‘When I went to Cambridge, I had the mindset our marriage could be mended,’ he says. ‘There hadn’t been any infidelity, we didn’t hate each other and we had three kids so, in my head, it wasn’t entirely broken.’
He secured a flat in Cambridge so the family could visit and intended to return home at the weekends when his rowing crew was training on the Thames. Three weeks into the university term he broke a rib training.
Last week, the Olympic rower became the first of this year’s crop of celebrity contestants to be voted off the show after achieving the lowest ever score in Strictly history for his jive. For those of us who watched his partner Luba Mushtuk coax him through his dance moves, it was excruciating. Pictured: The pair perform their first dance during week one, a waltz to Gold
‘I didn’t row in the boat again until January and had to be in Cambridge for physio and hospital treatment. I’d also really underestimated how hard I’d have to work to get on top of it, academically.
‘Yes, I could have dropped out. Was the marriage more important? That’s on me that I didn’t really know. I wanted to prove to myself and to Bev I could cope.’
James soon realised if he was going to succeed he needed to ask for help. He contacted the physiologist from the British rowing team to help him train with his broken rib and sought Jordan’s help with his studies.
‘To be honest, the injury saved my academic course. I had to train on my own so I was in Cambridge a lot more. Jordan was my counsel for many things including statistics, which was a nightmare course — lots of numbers.
‘Spending time with her was refreshing. She and the other friends I made at Cambridge liked me for me. You need confidence to step out of a long-term relationship into No Man’s Land. I realised Bev was right. I thought, “Actually, I will be OK, Bev will be OK and the kids will be better.”
‘We decided to separate in late November. It had come to the point where Bev and I felt, “What example are we showing the kids by having this non-relationship?”
‘Once we’d made the decision, we sat the children down and told them because we didn’t want them to have a pretend Christmas and then split up.’
When Jordan met James on the first day of term at his college, Peterhouse, she didn’t have a clue he was a feted Olympian or that he’d suffered a brain injury
James is the sort of man who has ‘honest’ written through him. He is also ‘selfish’, ‘determined’ and ‘lacking in empathy’ (his words) — or was. They are qualities that make for a world-class athlete but are not, he says, ‘the ingredients for a good marriage’.
Today, he can’t put his hand on his heart and say his brain injury is to blame for the end of his marriage, although they were ‘in a good place before the accident’.
‘We were trying for Trixie,’ he says. ‘Would we have split up sooner after the accident if we hadn’t had kids? Probably yes. I wasn’t that consistent in the year after the accident.
‘I became agitated with noise. Noisy mealtimes when kids are being kids didn’t bother me before. Things like that were hard on Bev as well.
‘Where I failed after the accident is being present in the room but not really being there. I’d be worried about other stuff, thinking, “You’ve got three kids you’re responsible for. How are you going to look after them?”
‘If I could go back and change one thing it would be that, but part of my make-up is that I try to look after the practical solutions rather than the emotional ones. If I have been upset and cried it’s been because of the impact on our eldest son.
‘He was eight when the accident happened and he had a very different dad for the next few years.
‘I had an epileptic seizure with him at home and he had to call the ambulance. At ten, you don’t want to see that. So for him it’s been . . .’ James searches for the right word. ‘Difficult. I really feel for him . . .’ Again, he stops.
‘The kids are the most important thing in all of this. Bev and I are still sorting things out to see how we can work as a family unit.
‘Next week, Jordan goes back to New York for a few months to work. She can decide whether she wants to be in England and I’ll have time to reform a long-term relationship with the children.
‘I think it’ll be healthy for Jordan and me. Cambridge is a very isolated bubble.’ Like Strictly?
He laughs. ‘I wasn’t exactly there long enough to find out,’ he says, ‘but after my tango my son texted, “that wasn’t great NGL”.’
NGL? ‘Exactly,’ says James. ‘I had to ask a young person.’
He nods at Jordan. ‘Not going to lie.’