Craig: So James, you're a tough man to track down. How are you and where are you?
James: I'm at home in London at the moment, but yeah, the last few months my diary seems to be being controlled by three people and I'm not one of them. So, uh, I'm not like the Scarlet Pimpernel, but I may appear to be.
Craig: We've known each other a while and the reason I wanted to talk to you on the podcast was you've just had this extraordinary life. You've had extraordinary highs in sportsmanship and the achievement of that you've also had some amazing lows in terms of serious injury and recovering from that and I wanted to get a sense of who you are and where you came from, so just tell us a little bit about your childhood.
James: Unlike so many people I had very few barriers to entry for anything in life… a middle class upbringing in Surrey with really supportive parents. And thinking about what characteristics made me aspire to be successful I think I regard it as a quality, many people don't, is stubbornness and my mum was really adamant that once we started something we wouldn't give it up. Swimming is a brilliant grounding in terms of sports, but it's not the most fun diving into a cold swimming pool at unsociable hours…7pm on a Friday night when you're 10 isn't exactly what I wanted to do, but my mum let me give up.
And I think that attitude has been there ever since. I think motivation for me, my granddad won the pools in 19, was it 1959, although my mum would say he didn't win the polls, he came third and won. But then that was enough to buy a house and a mortgage. And suddenly from living week to week, the aspirations for my mum changed and then for me and my sister, it was right, you want to go to university and become a lawyer or a doctor. I clearly mucked that up by going rowing.
Craig: Well, I've watched, um, a few sort of sporting documentaries about how people become who they are. And, you know, there's ones on Tiger Woods, David Beckham, Andre Agassi. And they all had parents who were basically driving them, pushing them. Was that the case for you?
James: In sporting terms, no, they didn't push me at all. Apart from they wouldn't let me stop. Academically, I'm not sure what it says about me, but they thought I would sink to the average. So the higher the average they could get, academically, the better.
So I went to, took the 11 plus, went to grammar school, and that was their way of, they really pushed that. And that meant that I was the only one of my schoolmates that went there, and I had to sort of bus, train, bus to get there. But they really felt, academically, if I was pushed, they didn't feel I'd be able to do it on my own, I think.
Craig: And were you always sporty?
James: That's a good question. Not always sporty. I think I was always good at stuff that required heart and lungs. I was always really bad at anything that required coordination. So, football and cricket were not my sweet spots. No matter how much I tried, I didn't get better. And then I was lucky that the school I went to in Kingston, Kingston's right next to the river, and I remember standing in the outfield of the cricket pitch when I was like 13, and watched this rowing boat go past, and I remember thinking, well, there's eight people there doing the same thing, whereas I'm standing here, waiting for the ball to come towards me, or hoping the ball doesn't come towards me.
Oh no, I tried that sport and the school I went to, Kingston Grammar School, someone had broken their neck playing rugby before I went there, so they stopped it as a sport and then chose, well, we're by the river, we'll give rowing a go. It was the first sport I did where the more work you put in, the better you get. Once you sort of work that out, then, you know, you keep working hard, you keep getting better, and the better you get, the more you enjoy it.
Craig: So, looking from the outside, it seems to me there's physique, raw talent, there's determination, or stubbornness, as you put it, and a willingness to suffer pain. I mean, I am not built to be a rower. You're, I think you're well over six foot, you've got big lung capacity, big heart capacity. Is that a basic given that you had to have that?
James: It is a basic given. You've got to be, the average height of the bridge team now is sort of 6'6, 6'7 If I could choose anything, you know, I would be 6'6 100 kilos, eight litre lung capacity. I was, you know, 6’3’ and 95 and I'm in the top, I guess, 1%of the UK's population height wise, but as a rower, I was always the smallest in the boats that I rode in. So I just had to make sure I got 100% out of myself. And if someone were more talented would cruuise through at 98% then I'll get them, but I, I, I knew I had to extract every bit of talent out of myself.
Craig: Which takes us on to determination or stubbornness as you put it. I've seen you a couple of times in the gym and you're just like pounding and you've got It seems to me you go, went into a kind of zone and just kept pounding on the treadmill.
And you, you were there for a very, very long time doing it. I mean, this is well after you'd won your golds and that kind of thing, but you just seem to have this capacity to just keep going and keep pushing. How important is that in achievement? It must be huge.
James: No, it is really important. And it comes with practice, but to be able to really empty your tanks, you know…I think the, if you, we've all driven a car and seen the petrol, I'd say you've got 30 miles range left, and my dad is an accountant and he would pull over at 30 miles because he doesn't want to, he doesn't want to run out of petrol. Whereas I'm always right, okay, no, there's more than 30 miles left for I have to fill up and
Craig: You mean there's more beyond what it's telling you to do, so your body's telling you, you're gonna have to keep up soon.
James: Exactly, exactly. There's more in there. I think there's more within each of us and I think if your head tells your legs to push harder. They will push harder. I think it's when your, when your mind starts giving your legs a way out of it, then you, you, you stop pushing harder and, and it takes, it takes practice to be able to, to empty the tanks properly.
And, you know, you have to become friends with lactic acid, which isn't the nicest thing, but, you really, you're being honest with yourself and you're emptying the tanks. And, you know, if I was nervous, well, I wasn't nervous. If you're nervous for the Olympic final, it wasn't anything to do with the people who were racing.
It was nervous of ow much it was going to hurt. And I would have to ask myself tough questions and come up with the answers. You know, I, our races are 2000 meters and if I got to 300 meters into the race and was confident of finishing, I hadn't gone off hard enough.
Craig: So on that point about pain, I think that loads of people are going to be really interested in that because they think that when they're confronted by that sheer physical agony, um, that they just want to give up and that's it.
But you're saying that you have the capacity to overcome that and push through that. How does that happen?
James: I think that the capacity for it. In racing terms is very different from if you're running a marathon or you're running on your own because, you know, I was, I rode in a boat with four people and their dreams are in my hands and my dreams were in theirs.
And so if I didn't fully empty my tanks, then I was letting them down. And I think that's much easier than having to ask yourself the question and you're the only one that knows if you've backed off, you know, when you're in a rowboat, you can tell if someone's backed off. not going flat out. And so I think there's that element of a team pressure that, that makes it…and, and the other thing I think is, it's really important that whether it's, you see lots of tests on the row machines, they're the ones at the gym that Everyone ignores because they're, you can't watch TV on them. But everyone almost gets a little bit distracted by the numbers on the machine because the machine would always win.
Whereas I used to try and treat those tests as a race rather than man vs machine because, you know, like Garry Kasparov found out you don't beat the machine. You just need to keep racing it. And I think that makes it easier to go through to a place where your body's not comfortable. But it does take time.
In the Athens Olympics where I, you know, won my second gold medal. Because of injury to one of our crew, our first race together was the Olympics, and and our goal was to win and that's very binary, which meant every other position was a failure. So we had to be prepared to chuck a silver medal away in order to risk everything to go for gold.
And there will be a time in the race where if we won in the first place and we're in a safe second, we have to be prepared to chuck that away in order to have a go at winning. And it was fine. Matthew and I had won before but the other two guys, it was their first Olympics, and so asking them to chuck a silver medal away, which would have been their best result You know, we've worked on that for six weeks to actually all be in the same position of, doesn't matter if you get a shiny silver medal, it's still a failure to achieve your overall goal.
Craig: And just talk a little bit more about that, because I think what that goes to is the sense that of the sheer commitment somebody's had to put in beforehand. So we see you racing in the Olympic finals, but it's years of getting up early in the morning, in the cold, where you can't really be bothered or you feel like, ‘Oh my God, I'd rather stay in bed’, was that tough? Were there moments where you just thought, God, why am I doing this?
James: Yeah, there are moments and it happens to everyone. But it also, part of it is easier in those cold mornings is that there's three other people waiting for you at the boathouse and If you don't go, they can't go out. I mean, they may well have been thinking the same.
And if we'd phoned each other out, none of us would have gone down. But the fact, you know, other people are going to be there is a big mission to get out of bed on those days when you're in the middle years and it's a long way from one Olympics and a long way from the next one. But also in terms of the Olympics in 1996 in Atlanta, which was a terrible Olympics for Great Britain, we only won one gold medal, in London we won 30 gold medals, and that one gold medal was actually in rowing with Steve Redgrave and Matthew Pinsent.
I got tonsillitis on the day of the opening ceremony in ‘96, and so I couldn't race. I trained for four years, couldn't race, and was confined to a quarantine room, so I didn't make anyone else ill. And my proudest moment in sport was actually in that room, committing to four years of training to the next Olympics.
And my dad was saying, well, you know, you should retire. No one's going to want to marry you, you're not going to get a job, you're not going to buy a house, um, within another four years, and the same thing could happen, well, he was very realistic in that, you know, you didn't make any money from rowing, and, you know, you've trained for four years, and you haven't even made the start line.
Craig: But, but just describe that moment, I mean, like, when somebody says, look, you've got tonsillitis, you're not going to be able to race. And you put in that energy and commitment, and as you say, you've made huge sacrifices in terms of career and stuff. Describe that moment when you realized you weren't gonna have your shot at that time.
James: In hindsight, it would have been easier than if he told me four years later, because I, if we're honest, our best would probably have been, we'd have been somewhere between third and sixth. So it wasn't like we were nailed on for a gold. It was, it was strange, because the, the doctor, the British Olympic Association doctor was a guy called Richard Budgett who is now the IOC doctor, the International Olympic Committee doctor, but he also raced with Steve Redgrave in 1984 and won a gold medal. And so, I've known Richard for a long time, so him telling me, it was sort of from someone you know telling you, it was almost a bit surreal, and then the reality of it hit me and I walked back to the accommodation block, which was like the Mary Celeste because I was sharing a flat with Steve Redgrave they'd been whipped out in case I made them ill.
And then I got told to go to a quarantine room and I remember walking out of the British block towards the, where I had to go to. And the Cuban block was right next to us and there's this Felix Savon, he won the Olympic boxing heavyweight gold medal for the last two Olympics. And I walked down, was in tears, and I bumped into him.
And he looked at me like, put it this way, he looked at me as though he wouldn't have that much trouble with me in the boxing ring. It was, um, the reality of a sort of fairly big bloke crying his way in the Olympic village. And it just, you know, I was broken and I was in the, in a quarantine room for a week, which was actually near the Olympic swimming pool. So I had no TV, but I could hear the cheers of the crowd for a week, followed by the national anthem of America or Australia.
Craig: And looking back on that moment, which must have been devastating at the time, with the benefit of hindsight, is there any way in which it sort of helped you in life that you weren't able to grasp hold of something you'd been working for so hard and it went? Is there any lessons or anything you learned from that?
James: There are definitely, definitely lessons. I honestly don't think I would have won if I hadn't experienced that disappointment. I was due to go into the Marines after I came back from the Atlanta Olympics, but I hadn't made my objective of seeing how good I was and had the chance to win. So I, I didn't do that. And I committed everything to the, to the next four years. And when Steve and Matthew said they wanted to do a four, it was right. There's one of those two spots is mine. And I, I set about making it impossible to leave me out. What
Craig: What did you think at that moment? And what did others think at that moment when you were saying, right, I'm going again, I'm doing another four years. Did they say you're, it sounds like your dad was a bit sceptical about the whole thing.
James: He wasn't the only one. There's a lot of scepticism because. Also, it's not like the British team now, where there's lots of people are winning. There was only really two people that won, that was Steve and Matthew. And I would have, was 28, I would have been 28 in Sydney, I was 28 in Sydney and so therefore, you know, you need to be establishing yourself in a, in a career. And so, yeah, there was nobody that said, you've made the right decision. You have to back yourself.
Craig: So what made you say, no, I'm doing it?
James: I think the element of stubbornness in terms of I started it, so I'm not going to finish and If I'd raced Atlanta and hadn't won, I think I would have, I would have stopped because I would say, okay, that's, that's the level I've trained well and I've raced okay.
And that's where I'm at, whereas not having the chance to answer the question myself, I think maybe carry on. And then also there's an element of, you know, when I left school, it's not a greatest career advice, but I chose my university based on the proximity to the rowing club where Steve Redgrave trained.
So that if I trained with him every day, and then I could, if I beat him one day a month, and then beat him one day a week, and then beat him every day, I would get myself to the point where I could win the Olympics. And, and having beaten him in training, and, you know, I knew on my day, I had the talent to, to be as good as him, and as good as him, you're going to win.
So I think there was that element of belief. And Steve and Matthew's coach, it was, it was my coach thereafter as well….but one thing that he said to me after Atlanta, when I spoke to him about, about carrying on, he said, what happened is it was terrible, but in order to jump high, you have to bend low, which is, you know, if you can't jump off straight legs, you have to bend down. And that was his way of saying look, you're going to be better because of this
Craig: Yeah, and I think that's a huge lesson. I'm fascinated by a conversation that I had with you, where you talked about being in Sydney, and that you had to make yourself be the absolute peak at the moment of the final. To the degree that you'd worked out when your grip was the strongest.
And how you had to reverse the time that it was the strongest in training and I just think people just wouldn't even begin to think of that, that surely you just get yourself to peak physical fitness, but actually you're trying to actually engineer your body in such a way that absolutely everything is firing on all cylinders.
James: Exactly. And it's, if you remember, you know, nearly 25 years ago now, and so there wasn't the same. sport science support and we didn't have the budget as well. So the grip strength was to make sure we were fully acclimatized to Australian time and your grip strength is supposed to be at its peak at about 5pm and for the years before Sydney we were going on training camps to Australia and we'd check our grip strength for the week before we went and then worked out the value at five o'clock at night and then. We do it in Australia, measure it every hour until it was at the same strength at 5 pm ustralian time as it was 5 p. m. UK time.
And then for that, the process, we'd try different ways of flying to Australia. So we go straight through in economy. We went straight through in business class. We had a few days stop over in Bangkok. Um, we tried all manner of different ways. And in the end, the best way to get there was straight through with a shower in Bangkok and fly business class, but you only got to fly business class if you won the world championships the year before. So it's the…there's a double incentive to make sure you got a, you got a bed on the way to Sydney.
Craig: And describe that moment where you crossed the line in first at Sydney, having not competed in Atlanta. Just what was that moment like?
James: Well, it was actually warming up for our race, we watched the final of the Men's Coxless pairs was just coming down as we were doing a warm up run and we watched the British guys who won their semi final and they came fourth in the final and missed out on everything and it was a lesson to us of how it could all be ripped away no matter if you're the favourite going into the race. And for us, you know, we'd won every World Championships between the two Olympics and, you know, crossing the line, it was, you know, the race was, the first half was very good, the second half wasn't very good, and there were four, four boats chasing three medals, so everything kind of closed up, and the fact that we had such a shared history together meant that we didn't tense up, if we had, we may well not have won, but winning, the overall, the overwhelming feeling was relief, if I'm honest, which is, you know, it's not the celebration that you'd imagined…
Craig: It's so interesting, I've never obviously won a gold medal in Olympics, I can't compare, but often in life I found that whenever I've achieved something or done something, that it is that relief rather than joy, and there's, there's something quite sad about that in a way, isn't there? Because you put all that energy and effort into it and actually all you feel is like, Oh my God, what would have been like if I hadn't done this? Rather than that's amazing, I've really achieved something.
James: I think it's also a testament to the standards we tried to set ourselves. We only raced four times a year and and so a lot of how our improvement was judged was, was what we did on a daily basis.
It was not just ticking the boxes of a training program on the wall, it was doing it to the best of your ability. And we got out of the boat and we saw our coach, and before we had the medal ceremony, it was just the five of us together. And He'd always said to us that we want to get to Australia and your worst race will be better than everyone else's best race.
That's the standard you would've got yourself to. He said, well done. And then he said, that wasn't very good, and we're like, thanks, um, you've won the Olympic final. Then he said it wasn't very, and and then he goes, he got each of us to score out of 10, and two of us said six, and two of us said seven. And so the reality is we, our worst race wouldn't have won. Our average race managed to win, and I think that's testament to how we prepared for those four years. So there's, there's satisfaction, but there is definitely, uh, not the sort of same sort of elation.
Craig: But just going to that place, I mean, it is really difficult. Why not elation?
James: I don't know. I mean, it was the first one I won, so I didn't have anything to base it on. As a crew, you know, if you watch someone when a football team scores a goal, most people, you know, the defenders don't go quite as mad as the strikers and midfielders. But Steve wasn't punching the air, wasn't ecstatic, so it kind of…
Craig: And you won again. What was it like when you won again?
James: That was very different because we knew then, because we were racing the Canadian guys who are world champions and had never been led or beaten, so it was a different, we believed our best would be good enough, but we didn't know we'd never raced them before.
And so we knew we had to have our best race in order to win. And we had a good race, and then you cross the line and I remember looking up at the finish line, and the Canadian guys had drifted ahead of us, and, you know, I thought we'd lost. And then it went to a photo finish, and the crowd found out before, and so seeing the Union Jacks being waved in the air telling us that we'd won was amazing. And that sort of, that was a real celebration in a way that the previous one hadn't been.
Craig: And the photo finish, I mean, how close was it?
James: It was eight hundredths of a second, which is probably, it's about a length of A4.
Craig: That is amazing, isn't it? That all that energy and effort, and it comes down to a tiny fraction of a second.
James: It does, and I think it's more because you can't see the finish line coming because you're going backwards. And a rowing boat moves a bit like a horse, it breaks and surges. We're lucky to get the surge at the right time, but it wasn't luck we're in a position to win because with a minute and a half to go, you know, I called our, our last minute because we are behind and we had to, we had to sprint early, otherwise we weren't going to catch Canada up.
And so we got through them and then, you know, the wheels start to fall off our wagon because our finish line had been a hundred meters earlier. And so we came to the line, they were charging back through us again. And so all four of us were delivered and emptied our tanks before the finish line, and we'd just about hung on. And I think that, having not been able to give any more, I wonder if I'd have been able to accept defeat if it had gone the other way.
Craig: What do you mean? Do you think you would've just been devastated? I saw the documentary of the Rumble in the Jungle, about how George Foreman, who'd been the favorite, just basically went into a period of depression because he couldn't cope for a period. Is that what you think would've happened to you?
James: I don't know. I mean, I think, one, anything I've watched about the Rumble and the Jungle, Foreman didn't give the best account of himself. And it's obviously different, because Ali and Foreman can affect each other. But I like to think, if I'd trained well, raced well, I'd lost, I would be big enough to, to accept it. And, you know, we had trained, had a really good build up and we had a good race. So I'd like to think if I'd, if I'd lost, I'd have been, you know, I'd be disappointed for a decade and still be disappointed to be lost now. But I'd like to have gone up to the Canadians and, you know, been, you know, you got us today, you're better than us.
You know, and it's, sport's fragile, you know, with the Canadian guys, three of them won gold in Beijing four years later. And the fourth guy had a motorbike accident the year after and then, uh, never rode again. And so you realize how, how fragile sport is. And that's where you see the emotions on, on people's faces at the Olympics. It's not like the Premier League where there's one a year, it's every four years.
Craig: And your medals were stolen, you got them back, but when did it matter to you as a thing, having that physical thing?
James: Not really, if I'm honest. I mean, the great thing about Olympic medals is that if you take them to a school and other people see them, they really, you know, they are different to other medals that I've ever won in terms of what they look like, what they feel like. They're all the same medals, whether you've won the 100 metres. Or the air pistol, not doing anything against the air pistol, but, you know, some events are synonymous with the Olympics and, you know, but you get the same medal or the only difference is it has your, your sport and your event written on the back.
In terms of sentimental value, they're, I'm not even sure they're the medals, they're my medals anyway, because if we go anywhere, they generally get bundled up and then you're never sure you get yours back anyway.
Craig: I'm interested in the next phase and it seems to me like you became a bit of an adventurer you did some arctic stuff and rowing across the Atlantic and that kind of thing it seems to me that again you were giving yourself massive challenges and things to overcome and that that drive was back again?
James: You get invited to parties after the Olympics for around a month and I was at this party then Ben Fogle who was TV presenter and did adventure stuff…we're at a party and he comes up and goes I'm going to do a rowing race across the Atlantic. Do you want to do it? And I said, ‘Can you row?’ And he went, ‘No,’ And I went, ‘No, I don't want to do it. Thanks.’
And then I thought about it and I didn't have a goal for the first time in, in 10 years, 15 years, probably. And that, and I thought, actually, this is a good way to keep myself fit.
Craig: This might strike you as an odd question, but interesting. You say that you didn't have a goal. Are you addicted to challenge?
James: I think friends and people know me really well, it's been, uh, and in fact my ex wife said it comes under pretty well, it's, it's all about the destination for you, not the journey. And so that's a fair point in that there's a goal and then I don't really enjoy the journey as much as I should…
Craig: But people would always say that you should focus on the journey. So lots of people say about good mental health is you should be present or whatever you're doing or whatever stage and whether that's, you know, taking the kids to school or having to, you know, having to go to the shops or winning an Olympic final. You've got to be present. And that's interesting you saying that actually you struggle with the kind of slightly more mundane bits.
James: It's not necessarily mundane bits of life, just on the other side, but in terms of sporting perspective that we didn't really celebrate milestones along the way… so I won two Olympics and six world championships. I didn't really celebrate any of the world championships in the same way at all, even though you're racing the same people, because they were just a step on the way to the Olympics.
And in terms of focusing on the destination too much, and if I could go back in time, I think there were times when, especially when my kids were young, that I was present in the room physically, but maybe not mentally. That wasn't there on them. And that's one thing that I've, I've learned as, as I've got older, but I was old when that happened anyway. So I, yeah, that's a big thing. Now I try to make sure, as you say, I'm present physically and mentally. I mean, it's a big difference to people you're with.
Craig: There's some pain, some difficult moments in your life and one of them was obviously I think your niece died at the age of six days and you decided to raise a lot of money to try and you know as a as a sort of tribute a way of I'd like to remember of Ian also making sure that this didn't happen to other people or trying to just describe that what what that was all like.
James: Yeah, no, it was, it was incredibly difficult. You know, you're seeing my sister go through a really healthy pregnancy. And then there was one or two minutes at the end of labor that when, you know, birth asphyxiation and, you know, I, I still remember the phone call from my mom, just saying what happened. And that week, when they, they put Eva into, uh, neonatal unit and tried calling her, which reduced the brain, brain swelling and, and, uh, increased brain activity and, and just that watching the turmoil of, of my sister and my brother in law, of what they were going through and anything that had been expected. Right up until the last minute of labor. So it was incredibly difficult.
Craig: And lots of people o understandably, massively struggle with that. You know, the, a terrible thing happening to good people and it seems so unnecessary and pointless. How did you and they cope with that? Did they find a way of coming to terms with it?
James: They're amazing. I mean, they yeah, I don't know how they cope with it. The way they did. I think part of it is their relationship was so strong it, they're still together now with three beautiful kids. I think if there, if there had been any fissures in a relationship that would have, that would have cracked them open and they look for answers. They, they got the answers that they were happy with. I don't know how they cope with the unfairness of it all. It's the sense of the unfairness of it all that was really.
Craig: I think that's what so many people struggle with is that we live in a world of risk where terrible things happen. Was there anything that with the benefit of hindsight, you feel able to say, I took that from it, or this is what I learned, or this is what it made me think and feel about life.
James:Do you know what the interesting thing is, in that Bev, who is, who is my, who is my ex, we already had our, our first child, when they had to leave her, and we had Kiki, who was our second, um, and Bev wanted to have her at home. And my risk, aversion, having, having what happened to my sister in a hospital, I just thought it was too much of a risk to have Kiki at home.
And, and Bev was like, no, we need, I want to be comfortable. I need to feel safe, this is the right environment for me. And, and it was, it was, it's really empowering to see actually, you know, this is, I know what's right, I know, and, and to get confident from your surroundings and to actually be in control of a process.
And actually, whereas part of me in after that situation was, let's have an elective caesarean because the risk in my head were reduced because of that. And, and best I know what to have it at home in the environment I'm

Craig: I want to take you forward now to 2010. And you were doing another massive challenge. Uh, you were cycling across America. And then something really terrible happened. Why don't you tell us a bit about what you were doing and then what happened?
James: Retirement from sport is difficult and a lot's made of people missing the changing room and wanted to go out of retirement because of that. I didn't really miss that side of it. I think what took me time to come to terms with was, you're used to looking at a ranking sheet of paper and if you're top of the list, then that's good. But I think I too long equated top of the list, meaning everything's good. Meaning you're happy, meaning you're a good husband, boyfriend, Dad, work colleague, whatever, because you're top of that and happy because you're top of that sheet. And then when that objective ranking goes, you're a bit lost. I was, I was definitely lost to say, am I a good dad, a good husband, a good work colleague, a good mate, a good at achieving what's my goal now?
You know, when someone asks you what you're doing now, nothing seemed to quite match up to the simple answer of going to Olympics.
Craig:But why does it have to Something superhuman. Why does it have to be I'm going to cycle across the UnitedStates, or I'm going to row the Atlantic?
James: Sport is a very sterile environment.Yes, the lakes change, but it's 2, 000 meters, and it's, it is very sterile, whereas rowing across the Atlantic, it was a small dot on a massive landscape, and actually was less about sport, more about problem solving. And I got to the position, when I was in America working with Discovery Channel, whereas my hobby had also become my, my job and employment as well, which is, which is everyone's dream. And yeah, and that you're right. It is a risk. It's not an adrenaline sport, but you're right. It is a risk. And I was cycling from just outside Death Valley, Nevada, up to Chicago, and Lake Erie. And I was early in the morning, about half past six, I got hit by a Wind River fuel truck hit the back of back of my head. I was wearing a cycle helmet, but he was going 65. And yeah, My first memory is about a month later.
Craig: Did he hang around? Did he spot that he'd done it?
James: Yeah, he stopped. He called the ambulance on his CB radio. They came and they called an air ambulance. And then they took me to hospital.
Craig: How long did that take to come?
James: I don't know. I was in a coma for 10 days because I had swelling on the brain and then I came out after 10 days and then my first memory is, I'd say, between three and four weeks later and then there's sort of islands of memory I can remember certain events but I can't, I have no day to day memory really for the next sort of six weeks.
Craig: So as well as the brain injury, how badly mangled was your body? As
James: As luck goes, I, I broke a bone in my foot, but I was, I was actually pretty, pretty much okay. On the other side of the thing, which meant they could concentrate on what, what happened to my head, it's and, and that period was worse for, for my parents, and, and, and for, for Bev and for the kids, because, you know, my parents got the, the phone call, all right, you've got 24 hours to get here, we don't know what's gonna happen.
Craig: Did they think you were gonna die?
James:And, you know, they said they, they got 24 hours, they, they got off the plane in Arizona 10 they didn't know what to expect, you know, and that's, and then when I was in a coma, Beth found out she was pregnant with, with Trixie, our youngest. So, it was, you know, it was, it was really, really stressful for them, and I think my first memory is coming around and, um, everyone behaving really weirdly.
Craig: How so?
James: Just because everyone's treating me differently. And to be honest, that carried on for a long, long time. I think perceptions changed from people who knew me, loved me, and from people I'd worked with, or people I didn't meet, because having had a, in my, I got hit on the back of the head, women hit on the back of the head, and the front of my brain hit the front of my skull.
Craig: I'm interested in this because they're treating you in a certain way and they're looking at you going God, he's really badly damaged. There's obviously brain damage here. There's difficulty here. Were you sitting there thinking, I'm still the same James, these people don't understand? And it was you that couldn't quite see the problem. Does that make sense?
James: It does make sense. I think I had. I could remember up to the, you know, the morning of the accident. So I can remember everything before the accident. I can't remember anything after the accident, and I can't remember anything of, you know, people who came to see me in the hospital. I was in the hospital in America for a month, and I got, you know, Matthew Pinsent came out, and Ben Fogle came out, and I have no recollection of having seen them in America.
But afterwards, I felt every decision I made or everything that I did was always being judged through the prism of a brain injury, rather than because I'd always been that sort of person. I'd always behaved like that, or maybe it was an exaggerated way of, of past behavior. And there's one, there's one bit in hospital, I can't remember it, but I was in hospital, um, and I was, this is in America, I was up eating in bed, and they brought me the, the food, so starter, main course, and dessert, apparently.
And I shoved it all on one plate and put ketchup on it. And my mum asked, you know, what… what, what's he doing? And, and the, the, uh, nurse goes, they all do that and it was all, you know, all being people with a brain injury. And so I'd gone from one sector of the population to this tiny small section of the Venn diagram of, because a lot of people have brain injury, have no sense of taste or smell and three things, three plates makes no sense. One plate makes much more sense.
Craig: And tell me about, living without physical taste or smell…. You still don't have taste or smell, which I, I mean, just tell us a little bit about that and then we'll go on to the bigger thing.
James: It's, it just, it just removes an element of normal social life in terms of where should we go out to eat? What should we eat? When I came over you had to have more fire alarms because with the kids there I couldn't smell the smoke. You know, it sort of just affects life in a..
Craig: Does it make eating boring?
James: Yeah, it does make eating boring, but I'd actually…having had to eat, you know, thousands of calories a day for a long time, food was fuel and I'd actually, food was just becoming real pleasure rather than something I had to eat. And so, for it then to go back to being in even less tasteless fuel is a little bit annoying, but that's on the scale of things that could have happened. I'll take that.
Craig: And how did it affect your personality? I think that you had some anger management issues because of it.
James: There was, there's frustration of my, my ceiling, or what I was capable of, what I believe I was capable of, other people thinking I wasn't. So I think they were, I've always hated people putting limits on me as what, you know, whether you can achieve in anything, be it sport or whatever. If someone say you can't do that. And I think that was, I found that really difficult with other people saying I won't be able to do that. And they're all not asking me, because they thought I wouldn't be able to….I really, that really got to me and especially with the people you're close to and know, I think that. That was hard to cope with and I didn't want to change my desires and beliefs on what I could do.
Craig: And your anger thing though, that must have been hard for the people around you. Because you got necessarily aware of why you're suddenly behaving in this way?
James: Yeah, you're right. There was definite intolerances of things that I wasn't, that didn't bother me before, I would get angry about, and one thing that there was, if plans changed, I was not very good at adapting to a changing timetable.
Craig: So James, I think this is quite difficult to talk about because when we all have stuff in our lives that we have to learn from, or know that something's going wrong. Was there a moment where you sort of identified that, I've, there's a problem here in terms of how I'm behaving, acting, and I'm gonna have to overcome that. That must have been quite a difficult moment if there was.
James: I think it took me, it took me longer than it should have to buy into the concept of therapy and to the belief that it would make a difference. As athletes, we're very close to the team, the four of us, and actually the five of us with our coach, and we didn't use a sports psychologist. We had a close relationship where we had complete honesty with each other and. Brutal honesty and then we didn't wear a grudge and all working towards the same goals. We didn't, we didn't use that. And so, and I think coming from a sporting background, you don't want to show weakness to your team or your opposition.
Craig: And so, and it's how you see therapy?
James: Well, exactly. I think asking for help, now, I see asking for help as a sign of real strength. Then, I saw it as a sign of weakness. And so, I think it took me too long to really be honest in therapy and then from that, the ability to be reflective and then I'll say, hang on, is that behavior me as a result of the brain injury or me as a result of, of just, you know, my personality?
And I think that, that made a big progress. And then I was reflective enough to realize that I actually, for the first time in my life that I was drifting. I wasn't in control of where I was headed and it started to really get me get me down. I became withdrawn because people's perceptions of what I was able to do and putting limits on me meant I just I just sort of started to hide away and then I thought, well, actually, I've got to prove people wrong.
And I've got to start with proving to myself that I am back to what I was before. And actually, and having, I have been doing some work on non communicable diseases, lifestyle diseases, with policy exchange and the Centre for Social Justice on public health policy. And I felt I was lacking academic credibility.
And I thought, actually, if I went back to university, I could prove myself academically and, of course, I wanted to do an MPhil in Human Evolution at Cambridge University, if I could get in, prove myself academically there, and while I was there, there's a race between Oxford and Cambridge, a boat race, if I could do that, 15 years after stopping rowing, then I could ask, I could tell myself, I'd achieved physically and mentally, and then…
Craig: Let's come back to that in a minute, because I was, I'm genuinely interested in your points about therapy because it was something you resisted, but it helped you. And I think, what's very interesting talking to a lot of people on this podcast is that they often do feel resistant, but at the end they feel, God, I'm glad that I was willing to be vulnerable. I was glad that I was willing to expose myself to that.
James: Yeah, no, I think it's really powerful. And also rowing is not the most diverse of sports. And especially the level I rode at, the diversity of personalities amongst the mates I hung around with every day wasn't that diverse either. And so that was part of actually being, exposing yourself and trying different things.
Craig: Are you able to look now and go, actually, there was a lot of good that came out of me having the accident?
James: Well, I don't think I've ever wished it had happened. I think I'm in a place now that I wouldn't have got to if it hadn't happened. Being honest with myself, Jordan, my wife has opened up a different avenue and perspective on the way I look at life.
Craig: And it's interesting, isn't it, that we read, doing some research for this, that 82% of people with brain injury get divorced. And that you had struggled very, very hard for that not to happen. That must have been tough?
James: It was tough, and it is really tough when you have kids as well, because you get divorced because you're no longer compatible or in love with each other or one doesn't feel that way about the other one. But the worst thing about the divorce is not waking up with the kids every day. That's really hard.
Craig: How have you adjusted to that?
James: I think, well, part of it, back to your, the point you made about being there physically and mentally and being present, I think the one thing that has changed is with the limited time. I no longer sort of go, what do you want to do? You actually plan stuff and you make every minute count. Jordan has been really helpful in that sort of saying, right, what are you really pushing in the, in the right way and being an amazing, an amazing stepmom to them. And so I think that's, that's really. really valuable.
Craig: And when you recovered, you went on to Cambridge University to study, and I suppose the thing that everybody will be really, this is so typically you, is that you became the oldest man on the boat race team and then won it. I mean, you were just like, incorrigibly driven.
James: Yeah, well, I mean, no, I wasn't the first person in the boat by any stretch. There was eight people in the boat and I was
Craig: How much older were you than the team?
James: I was older than everyone else's dad, to put it that way.
Craig: But that's extraordinary, isn't it, that you I mean, to get back to that level of fitness. Did they think that this is a joke?
James: By the end of the first month at Cambridge, I was struggling academically to…you know, when I was at university the first time, there was no internet, you know. That's how long ago it was. I was struggling academically to get back into learning, and then the boat race, I'd come pretty much near the bottom on the ergo-testing and had broken a rib, you know, and so I was at the bottom of the squad as well and I, I sort of had to race my way back up and I got into the boat about a month before the boat race.
Craig:Why did you need to do it? You've got one gold medal, you don't need to prove anything, why did you need to do it?
James: I think I needed to prove it to myself, the same way that academically to prove it to myself was actually, the accident had been something that happened to me, it wasn't going to define the rest of my life and I set myself the, well, the challenge of doing it and I wasn't going to, if I hadn't made the boat, then fair enough, I just wasn't going to give myself an excuse to, to duck out of doing it.
And I think that's the, it's the same mindset that we spoke about right at the start of actually, you know, not giving up and being stubborn about it. And it, the Olympics to me, it didn't, this flies in the face of it really is that it wouldn't have mattered to me. If it hadn't been on telly and there'd be no one watching, if I just raced the Italians, the Aussies, the Croatians, all that, you know, if I'd raced them in a lake with no one watching, I'd have known.
And that's the same with the boat race. I'd set myself that challenge to get there. You know, you're training out in Ely, there's no one watching anyway, maybe the old cow and that's about it. So it was just a personal thing.
Craig: And a few years ago, a few years ago, you came to me and said, I'm going into, I want to go into politics. And you asked what my advice was. And I think my first advice was, don't. It was like, why on earth do you want to do that? But you have. So what, what's the challenge there?
James: I asked for advice and I, I went through what was on the list and you get to an interview where the members vote. And a lot of the people turning up for the interview were very different from me. They had a different journey into politics. Maybe they had their eye on it far earlier in their life than I had. And it took me a long time to work out why I wanted to do it. And then actually, once you, you have those answers, it becomes easier to be, to be.
Craig: And why do you want to do it?
James: I think the reality is in terms of the bigger picture, if there's a, if there's a big motivation, it's preventable health care. My mum worked for the NHS and 95% of the NHS budget is spent on treatment and only 5% on prevention. And to make it work going forwards, I think that ratio has to be shifted. But on a smaller scale that this actually comes from having had very few barriers in my life. And then actually having suffered an accident and a serious injury is actually, there are more barriers.
presented, whether actual barriers or perception barriers. And there's a load of people out there with, with very specific problems and no way of getting a solution. And having spent time… being in a constituency and see actually the effect you can have on helping people with those problems is enormous. And so, yes, there's a bigger picture of what I would like to d to see happening in health care, but actually for the 80, 000 people in my constituency, you can make a huge difference. And part of giving back for me and public service and the support that I had as a sportsman is actually, you know, contributing to people's life on a daily basis.
And I think the best way to do that is. By being a good constituency MP and then in the national interest in Westminster.
Craig: And we're getting to the end of the interview. You've been incredibly generous with your time and also what you've been prepared to say. The one question that we always ask at the end is, if there was one piece of wisdom that you could pass on, what would it be?
Having been through all the challenges that you have been and achieved as much as you have and been through the difficulties you have, is there one thing that you would say to people?
James: I would say own it, I think. Own your successes, but also own your mistakes and don't hide from either. I think that's the, I think it's very important to walk towards a problem if you've caused it and be honest about that. And then the same way that, you know, own your successes as well.
Craig: And what happens if you don't own something and if you do own it?
James: I guess the other bit of advice there is actually a question that I ask myself. Is that an excuse or a reason? And I think too often, the reason something hasn't gone well, there is a reason for it, and I've used an excuse.And I think that's, that's, so that, being reflective, and I think that's where owning it comes in, actually. You need to, to look at what you've done to cause a problem, rather than an excuse.
Craig: And it seems to me that you're saying, be honest with yourself?
James: Yeah, and I think that's, you know, that's something I have learned over the last ten years, is to, to ask yourself, to be reflective and ask yourself honest questions. It's not about having regrets. It's actually saying, right, let's own it and then move on.
Craig: James Cracknell, I'm looking forward to working out what mad thing you're going to do when you're 90 and seeing it and cheering you on. But thank you so much. That was great.