James Cracknell - Olympic Rower HARDtalk

Now it is time for HARDtalk. My guest today has tested his

physical powers to the edge of destruction. James Cracknell is a

former Olympic rowing champion who has performed an astonishing feats

of endurance across oceans, desert and ice sheets. His toughest

challenge came by accident, not design. Two years ago his skull was

smashed by a truck as he cycled across America. He survived, his

body healed but his brain suffered significant damage. How has this

extreme athlete coped with the James Cracknell, welcome to

HARDtalk. The IQ. I think we have to begin with that fateful event in

Arizona more than two years ago when you were on your bike, you

would hit by a massive truck, it smashed your skull. Looking back

now, do you feel that that event irrevocably changed your life?

did, no question. -- no question that it has. It is difficult for

people to see from the outside because brain injuries are not

something you come across, fortunately, very often. What I am

left with is far removed from that. It is an exaggeration of the

challenges people face: Holding a family together, reacting in a way

that is predictable, not getting frustrated. My wife says I am not

the man she married. That is something that you have to cope

with. She says it as bluntly as that? You, James Cracknell, are not

quite the same man that she met and married. She does. It has been hard.

People don't really know what to expect from brain damage. They

either Steer clear of it. You are different from before. I have made

improvement. From the start, people would skirt around it was say I

look well when clearly they did not think so. Best has always been the

toughest person to ask me the tough questions. -- Beth. It has helped

me get to where I am but it has meant that home has not been the

sanctuary I have wanted. I want to speak more about your home but I

also want to ask how you can judge your recovery yourself. There are

some tangible things. You have lost your senses of smell and taste. You

can measure your memory to a certain extent. Your personality,

the way you respond to other people, social situations, the shortness of

your temper, that is difficult to know yourself how much you have

changed. Absolutely. It has required a lot of thought and

effort on my part to work out what is maybe Amy -- me being me or me

behaving as a damage -- as a result of the damage to my brain. I have

to put in place a strategy to deal with that. By has bought two

psychologists, neurologist's. -- I have spoke to. I am looking at what

my old characteristics are. If it isn't me being annoyed or situation

is getting on top of me because of the injury and then having to take

a kind of time out. -- if it is me. To help me and the audience pick

away at who you where and who you are now, let's go back to before

July, 2010. Before the accident. Let's think about who you were.

This immense competitive urge that you had. I know it came out as a

schoolboy rower, through preparation for Olympics and beyond.

You have always, it seems to me, been somewhat addicted to pushing

your physical limits. I wonder how that came about. In terms of the

sport, rowing, I found it very difficult -- different from rugby,

football and cricket, the three big sports in the UK. You're always

doing something, for one. Cricket, a lot of time standing around. You

are always doing something. No one person in the team is more

important than anyone else. In football, there are a couple of

people in the team that you give the ball too. The same with the

best bowler were the best batsman, you rely on them. In rowing, you

are doing the same thing at the same time. You put the effort in

and you get the result you deserve. In rowing, you could find it easy

measure of durability and the talent. For you, that took you all

the way to the Olympic gold. -- your ability. Then, like any

athlete who ages, you have to think about what comes next. That is

where I am fascinated. You continued to strive to find ways of

pushing yourself to physical extremes. But that was not in a

rowing boat, it was somehow. -- if it was not. Olympic sports, by that

I mean, I mean yes, we are the Olympic champions every year, but

the Olympics are the pinnacle and you do not make a living of Rohan.

You pursue a life on hold. -- a living from rowing. People ask what

the ideal age is for a roar. When do you want to get a house? As a

footballer, you learn so much a week that you don't have that

decision. It is controlled by market forces. Not many people find

some sports are as interesting as the ball. You do not have the same

awards. Thinking of the race to the South Pole but you undertake, which

frankly almost did for you, and rowing across the Atlantic, which

was pure agony like you have not experienced before, did you do that

because that was a way of using your physical gifts in a way that

would turn you into being a unique star? It is nothing I have ever

done before for coverage outside. From Ali, I did it for two reasons.

-- Premat relief. I had done the same thing from the age of 18 to

the age of 32. We used to train seven days a week. And they have

won the off. You knew you would do that for four ears. -- and then

have one day off. You would do that for four years. It takes two years

to retire. I was told to raise the Olympics in August and then have

September off and start training in October. That is when you next four

years will start. You do not get your head around retiring by

October. It takes more than one month. Therefore, you have got two

years before you don't look at your sport in the same way, thinking "I

could do that." You need to not look at results and think you could

do that. I had the world record for ten years. We were broken at the

London Olympics. It was set in 2002. For some part of it, I knew my best

would be good enough. I was still good enough to win. There is always

that temptation to go back. You need to do something else to

challenge yourself in a different way. Once you do stop, even if it

is only within those two years, for the first time in a decade or more,

I didn't have a goal to focus on. Right across the Atlantic was a

goal to focus on. That brings us back to July, 2010. You had to make

children. You had two young children. At the time of her

accident, your wife was about to discover she was pregnant with your

third child. There you are one life support, hanging between life and

death in Arizona. You had a terrible accident. When you begin

to recover, I just wonder whether it was plain to you that you had to

end this obsessional pursuit of athletic challenge? In terms of my

wife and died before, and nothing I did after the Olympics was costing

the family in terms of career or money or anything else. I had been

lucky enough to get to the situation where my obsession or

hobby was also my job. That is the ideal situation in terms if

anyone's dreams. What they enjoy doing, they can make a living off.

Then I realised... Had none. It is important to everyone. Both she and

you have written very movingly about the long road to recovery.

She has described her blazing anger when you first told her that you're

going to get on a bike again, for example. There was a big difference

between what she wanted me to do and what I wanted to do. I would

not have suggested I was going to get back on my bike straight away.

I wanted to go back to doing something because I felt my

decisions weren't trusted after what happened in America. My

ability to make the right decision at the right time was not trusted.

That was entirely understandable, wasn't it? Not really. I had taken

myself off the road the night before. I felt it was too windy and

there was being blown across the road. I started again when the wind

died down and I got hit from behind on a public highway. That can

happen to anyone at any time. If it had been in an isolated region of

the world and it had been my decision, I could understand that

mistrust. I felt that after the accident, my decisions were

With respect, and I am delving into deep private issues, but you have

chosen to write about them, but what I have learned from Emily's

account is that she didn't trust you and didn't see you in the same

way after the accident not necessarily because she didn't

trust -- didn't want to see you going on the back so quickly, but

because she saw you weren't fathering your children in the way

you had before. She felt you were being very unfair to your eldest

boy, shouting at him, treating him with a temper that she found

utterly unacceptable. Yes, and looking back, so do I. I never

smack him, I never have smacked him. But what made it the hard for him

was unpredictability. All children leave -- need a level of

predictability. And getting angry about different things. This is

what neurologists say. You become more of you when you have a brain

in this -- injury. Your habits and personal traits become stronger. I

always had a problem with him talking with his mouth full. But

that and then became a big issue at mealtimes. We would struggle to sit

together at the table. Things like that were not fair on him. For six

years of his life, he had one father, and for the last three

years, he had another dad. I am different now from what I was 18

months ago, but there was a chasm that developed between us, which I

am slowly building a bridge across. But if I let that go, he will never

come back. At the same time, you are struggling to maintain and

nurture the relationship with a wife, who, frankly, is going

through a terrible amount of pain because what you are showing her

about your changes. One account she has written about a time when she

argued with you about the way you were handling your eldest boy. You

both had an argument. She wrote: James grabs me around the neck,

holds me down on the bed, tightens his grip until I cannot freeze. For

a moment, I generally believe he might kill me. I pray a flicker of

empathy will ignite behind his deadened eyes. Finally, he lets me

go up and I grabbed the phone and lock myself in the bathroom. That

is horrible reading that. The one thing we said when we wrote this

book is that we would write it separately. And we would not censor

what either one of us said. Because we want to help people out. When

you first saw what Beverley had written, what was your reaction?

I cannot remember that night. There are certain things... My day-to-day

memory has improved massively over the 2.5 years since the accident,

so I can't remember that. I can remember her sister coming around.

When she was on the phone, she called her sister, and she came

around, but I can't remember what she said. But Beverley said... In

the end, she said, it is not due. That is not to leave. It has never

happen before or since. But to make someone I unconditionally loved

feel like that - regularly - whether it is from a situation like

that or if it is from arguments or my youngest boy from arguments and

feeling like there is a different father, it is really horrible. I

cannot ever condone or forgive myself for that. And part of it is

because I look in the mirror and I see the same person. I hadn't

approach to the rehabilitation therapy in the right way. I hadn't

committed to it in the way that I needed to. And I thought I was OK.

The world looked the same through my eyes, it was just that people

were treating me differently. And that was hard for me to come to

terms with. You have had counselling and you have had

therapy. But are you ever frightened by yourself and what you

might do? No, I don't get frightened by my behaviour. Because

I know that there are certain things that I do need to do. I have

had a couple of seizures since the accident, which are horrendous for

people who are with me, have horrendous effects on the family.

Because after every seizure, I can't drive for a year. I wake up

in hospital. I had one at home and it was 1.5 years after the accident

and although angry and different at times, I am still his father, and

suddenly, my boy was back by my bedside in hospital. And to be

honest, I have no memory of the seven weeks after the accident. And

if so when I come round and begin to remember things being day today,

they become all normalised to might be different. They had become used

to it. But after the first seizure, it was very different. I can

remember off to the seizure and I can remember coming around in

hospital, but seeing the difference in my boy, he was suddenly back in

that place, it was horrible. And I know that if I don't rest, I am

more likely to have a seizure. sounds like you are more self-aware

and you have ever be because you have been forced to learn an awful

lot about yourself and literally the way your brain works. I don't

want to sound like a pop psychologist, but that has -- has

that enabled you to find a new meaning in your life? You said you

used to find meaning from physical tests and proving yourself. Have

you found a new way of finding meaning? Interesting that you say

that you don't want to sound like a pop psychologist, but that is what

Beverley, my wife, my parents, are all having to do because they are

having to see me on a regular basis and make judgments. And if they are

not prepared to be honest with you, it will be a real problem for you

and anyone else to be, and they are going to have to make those pop

psychologist decisions on what their gut instincts are. I would

much rather be told to my face than for them to go back to their

partner and say, oh, he was a bit funny today, but you are right -

this has given me a new perspective. Sport was very easy. And that is

what I have realised. You're basically doing sport full-time,

exactly what a 16-year-old boy would love to be doing, you are

judged only on the results from the sport. Outside of sport, you are

judged differently. Having now had a brain injury and an accident, you

are judged differently again. success and failure are much more

complicated in a life that is no longer governed by sport. In a way,

you are right. And what success and failure looks like is nothing that

I would have considered before. You leave the hospital and they say

that seven out of ten people with a brain injury get divorced. So a

measure of success would be the in a statistical anomaly rather than

conforming to this 70% or 80% of people who split up. I don't want

to have to see my children every other week for one day or two.

is where your absolute, fundamental meaning lies, I sense. Building

those bridges and making it work. Yes. I was 24 hours away from never

seeing them again. At times, they may wish they never see me again

but they do not want to be in a situation where I don't see them

again and that is crucial on every level.

Do you have any plans to go back on the road and to take another

endurance test or try to prove yourself again in a physical way?

In terms of proving myself physically, it was never about...

It was different environments. Water, icy conditions, the desert.

But I was lucky I started off in a different place of not having to do

so much because I have already done the hard work. In terms of what the

future holds and proving myself in certain ways, the challenge of what

I am left with now - slightly exaggerated - it is being married

and raising three children. That has got to be one of the hardest

things we all do. There is not enough time in the day and that is

one of the things I struggle with, now. Making a success of these

basic building blocks will give me the platform to do whatever I

choose to do and what I choose to do will be discussed as a family.

But what I have noticed since the accident, and many people will be

able to relate, is that people impose ceilings on where you will

be able to get to. If you listen to those limitations, whether it is a

psychologist or a neurologist, if they say you are only going to be