Olympic rowing champion James Cracknell has today hit back at his estranged wife Beverley Turner’s ‘exaggerated’ claims that his decision to take part in the Boat Race wrecked their marriage and said his efforts ‘pay the bills’.
Cracknell claimed the ‘complex’ separation was ‘a long time coming’ and was nothing to do with the Boat Race or the 2010 brain injury that almost killed him, adding that ‘rowing is easy’ compared to marriage.
But the father-of-three admitted his successful attempt to become the oldest winner of the race at 46 was a ‘selfish pursuit’ and told the Telegraph that he has since realised ‘there’s much more to life than mucking about in a boat’.
It comes after his ex, 45, said he ‘abandoned’ his family in a candid takedown of their relationship yesterday, adding he had never been the same since suffering a head injury when hit by a truck in the US nine years ago.
She also described Cracknell’s claims he was doing the Boat Race at 46 to show his children they can ‘do anything they put their mind to’ as ‘b******s’ and said his gruelling training was nothing more than ‘dereliction of parenting and marital duty’.
The couple ‘quietly separated’ last year and announced the news in a joint statement just days before the race saying they were focused on bringing up son Croyde, 15, and daughters Kiki, ten, and Trixie, eight.
James Cracknell, right, has hit back at claims by estranged wife Beverley Turner, left, that his training for the Boat Race wrecked their marriage
James Cracknell grins with delight after finishing the Boat Race on Sunday. Hours later he was rocked by claims his training put an unbearable strain on his marriage
The Olympian admitted his efforts to compete in the boat race, which saw him leave the family home in London for a student flat in Cambridge, were a ‘selfish pursuit’.
‘Now the race is over, I realise there’s much more to life than mucking about in a rowing boat. The last few months, with everything that has been going on at home, has put that into perspective for me. Rowing and sport aren’t the most important things in life. But to [achieve in sport], you do have to be a single-minded person.’
He added: ‘There’s this perception that I’ve left my family to go off to Cambridge, selfishly, but that’s a little exaggerated. And while yes, it may seem selfish, it also pays the bills.’
Cracknell became the oldest winner of the competition when he helped Cambridge to victory over Oxford on Sunday.
Beverley Turner with two of the former couple’s children Croyde and Kiki
He was eligible for the Cambridge team after enrolling on a masters course in human evolution, and he claimed this was because he wanted to ‘try other things’ and had not even considered entering the Boat Race at this time last year.
In his own candid interview, Cracknell describes his life as a three-legged stool made up of his family, his studies and Boat Race training, admitting it was his family who suffered.
But he claims that in the time between his 2010 accident and the Boat Race he was around more and that people focus on his training and sporting exploits more than they do on ‘the family stuff’.
He added: ‘We’ve been together for 20 years and I challenge any couple who have been together that long to say they’re the same people they were when they met. Marriage is complicated and hard, whether you’re an athlete or not. I know my behaviour is probably quite frustrating to live with, but I hope I have some good qualities too.’
Beverley watched the Boat Race from a friend’s home with her children rather than taking them to see his triumph.
In her account of the break-up, published in The Times, she wrote: ‘The kids needed to see that this enormous family sacrifice wasn’t entirely in vain.
‘James has spoken publicly about this latest feat, demonstrating to his children that you can do anything you set your mind to.
‘He won’t mind me admitting I consider that b******s. I wouldn’t want my children to view such an exit from familial responsibilities as something to aspire to.’
James Cracknell was seen heading to a gym in London on Monday, a day after his Boat Race triumph. His estranged wife Beverley Turner was also in the mood for keeping fit. Both have now had their say on their break-up, with Cracknell claiming it was ‘more complex’ than him leaving to go to Cambridge
She also detailed not just the impact of life after a brain injury , but also how the strain of being an Olympic calibre sportsman — and of being married to one — took its toll.
In the article, Beverley wrote of fearing the ‘dreadful example’ they were setting their children of married life, of her deep-rooted fear of being ‘ground down’, and of the ‘absolute dereliction of parenting and marital duty’ that training for the Boat Race had entailed — along with details of ‘snapping, sighing, arguing and slamming doors’.
While she said their relationship was — and still is — one built on ‘mutual respect and admiration’, she also chronicled behaviour that anyone can see would put strain on a marriage.
She wrote: ‘When James spent 50 days rowing across the Atlantic with Ben Fogle in 2005, he failed to discuss his plans with me in any detail despite us having a two-year-old son.
‘The difference in 2018 was whether I could reasonably live with these exhausting, self-centred pursuits for the rest of my life. I prefer the journey to the destination . . . James is all about the target.’
James and Beverley pictured on their wedding day in 2002
She insisted she does not put the end of their marriage solely down to his personality changes. She admitted that it had not been perfect before his brain injury because of the frustrations which can arise from being married to an ‘extremely driven man’.
‘As any woman will admit, there comes a time when you are sick of waking up alone on holiday because these alpha males are already at the laptop or on the rowing machine,’ she said.
‘Twice we went to Barbados and James spent three hours a day on the running machine inside the hotel. Most women want a partner to drink Buck’s Fizz with on the beach. We don’t want a man who’s fitting in gym sessions around kids’ club hours.’
The broadcaster, herself once a competitive swimmer, also revealed that she had been ‘sure he would fail’ to compete in the Boat Race, as it was ‘ludicrous to think he could regain the strength and stamina required to sit alongside 20-year-old rowers’.
In the piece, Beverley also wrote candidly about the impact of her husband’s accident.
In 2010, just after becoming the highest placed Briton ever in the gruelling Marathon des Sables, Cracknell nearly died. He was cycling across America, on another endurance challenge, when he was hit by the wing mirror of a petrol tanker travelling at speed.
It caused his brain to slam forward, crushing the frontal lobes — the part of the brain that controls personality. He was put into an induced coma, regaining consciousness in a hospital in Phoenix, Arizona, a few days later.
Beverley, who has her own antenatal class business, has spoken openly about the accident, of being in a Las Vegas hotel when she received the phone call that turned life upside down.
Cracknell, pictured, became the oldest winner of the Boat Race at 46. He also hit out at the perception that he ‘selfishly’ left his family and claimed his efforts pay the bills
The marriage came under intense pressure in 2010 after Cracknell suffered a crippling brain injury when he was involved in a crash with a truck while cycling in the US
Doctors warned her that she might see changes in her husband, including an inability to read emotions, irascibility, laughing or crying out of context, and arguing.
Those warnings, it turned out, were frighteningly accurate. (She explained: ‘The aftercare the NHS provides for the brain injured is hopeless.’)
Yesterday she wrote: ‘After a brain injury, a couple’s dynamic typically becomes one of parent and child: complete with nagging, resentment and sulking.’
She added: ‘When I told a friend that James was off to Cambridge, he said: ‘You never know, you might miss him.’ I replied: ‘But I’ve missed him for eight years.’
She continued: ‘The problem with a brain injury is that the supporting partner is never entirely sure what can be attributed to the condition and what is just your partner being a d***.’
She also revealed that James’s appearance last year on reality TV show Celebrity Island had been a welcome break, and that ‘the calmness that descended on the house during those six weeks was illuminating for me.
Yes, single parenting is incredibly hard, but the house was oddly more oxygenated for all of us.’
This latest piece is not the first time Beverley has detailed the problems in their marriage.
The couple also wrote a book about their experience called Touching Distance, in which they discussed the impact of the accident on their marriage.
In interviews they have referred to a statistic: 75 per cent — the percentage of marriages in which a person sustains a brain injury that end within three years.
James and Beverley, pictured at the Pride of Britain Awards in 2015. The couple say they are still maintaining a relationship for their children and spent Christmas together
Cracknell, who is studying for a Master’s in human evolution at Cambridge, celebrated his victory with his mother Jennie on Sunday
‘Look, we’re lucky,’ she told The Sunday Times. ‘He should have been dead. Yes, there are days when I think, ‘How can I live with this for ever?’ But I probably will. That’s probably good enough.’
The couple first met in the Jordanian desert, where they were chained together for two hours in a Bedouin tent for a television programme.
Cracknell was riding high after his first Olympic gold in 2000 and Beverley was an up-and-coming sports television presenter.
They got engaged soon after. He proposed in Croyde Bay in Devon — hence their son’s unusual name — and married in 2002 at Clearwell Castle in the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire.
He won gold again at the Athens Games four years later before retiring in 2006.
Beverley said she once laughed about how he would select a target on a map and put his foot down until they arrived.
‘James needs a goal, and pity the person who stands in his way,’ she said, in 2009, less than a year before his accident.
She does not blame her husband’s brain injury for the end of her marriage: ‘That’s too simplistic — it wasn’t perfect before.
‘I have spent many evenings in the company of Olympic medallists and it’s obvious to me that such ambitions rarely arise from a healthy psychological place.
‘Having to endure physical and emotional torture to prove oneself on a global stage starts as a blessing, but its inescapability is often a curse. How can these characters ever truly be happy when nothing but external validation drives them on?’
James and Beverley have three children Croyde, 14 who was named after Croyde Bay in Devon where his parents got engaged, and two daughters, Kili, 10 , and eight-year-old Trixie
Beverley tweeted her congratulations to the rower after his history-making performance with the Cambridge team, but warned about her piece in The Times
The couple (last pictured together in June last year) said in a statement in late March: ‘Together, we remain committed to our amazing children, they are our absolute priority and wish people to be kind and mindful of this.’
As far back as 2005, a year after that jubilant moment of familial pride in Athens, Beverley was openly speaking of the ‘massive rows’ that preceded the first of her husband’s post-Olympics challenges — his Atlantic rowing expedition.
‘Look, I married a rower, but I didn’t marry Sir Ranulph Fiennes,’ she said in an interview with the Mail. ‘It is only in the last couple of weeks that I have reconciled myself to the fact that he is going — and that he has his reason for doing it.
‘It is the right thing for him to do at this stage in his life; but it is hard, especially after I’ve been so good about his career. We’ve made endless sacrifices, never having a weekend in five years, never having a holiday, having so little time together. And now this.’
They weathered that storm (Cracknell and Fogle took 49 days, 19 hours and 8 minutes to complete the challenge), and Beverley was a tower of support as her husband went on to complete the London Marathon, a race to the South Pole (with Fogle again), the Marathon des Sables, and more. And then came the accident.
Instead of taking it easy, Cracknell was spurred into yet more feats of endurance. Within six months of the accident, the couple were discussing his next challenge: another bicycle race.
If anything, it would seem, the athlete’s determination post-brain injury has become steelier.
The couple married in 2002 at Clearwell Castle in the Forest of Dean (pictured left) and became one of the most glamourous couples in the worlds of sport and showbusiness
English rowers, from left, James Cracknell, Steve Redgrave, Tim Foster and Matthew Pinsent pictured together celebrating with their gold medals on the podium at Sydney 2000 Olympics
He started to apply for university courses after appearing on Celebrity Island with Bear Grylls last year, but at the same time his wife noticed his ‘behaviour had deteriorated’.
She took him to a neuropsychologist, who told them Cracknell had ‘tunnel vision’ and that ‘frontal-lobe injury makes you more of yourself’.
Having won a place at Cambridge (a year after attempting to become an MEP candidate), the strains on the couple became too great.
Last week, Cracknell told BBC Radio 5 Live they had tried everything to hold it together. ‘We’re also, as any couple is, different people from who we were 17 years ago and we can look back and saw we did everything.’
As for his brain injury, he said: ‘It’s not like the accident was last year, it was nine years ago, but I guess there’s an element of if you’re the partner you always judge your other half through the prism of what has happened.
‘As a sportsman, you are slightly single-minded and stubborn, which is great if you’re the sportsman but not great to live with. So if you become more of that, that’s an issue.’
His wife, meanwhile , insists there is ‘no animosity’ and that they spent Christmas together even though they had separated by then.