I’ve got my sparkle back – that’s what a younger man does for you! by Beverley Turner, the ex-Mrs James Cracknell
In her first interview since THAT seismic split from her Olympic hero husband...
Beverley Turner can pinpoint the exact moment she realised her tumultuous 17- year marriage to Olympian James Cracknell was finally over.
He was packing up the car to drive off to Cambridge university to start an MA — head full of dreams of winning the Boat race — while she dried up pots in the kitchen of their home in Chiswick, West london.
Another exciting new chapter was opening up for him as he chased yet another fresh challenge, while she — once again — was left at home to hold the fort with their three young children. ‘I was standing on the
doorstep, waving goodbye and it felt a bit like your teenage son going off to university,’ says Beverley of that day in 2018.
‘ there was an element of intense sadness, but it hinki already knew there probably wasn’t any coming back from it or all the trauma that we’d been through.
‘i’d tried to talk to him multiple times about what it would mean to be away from the family so much, but he had his blinkers on.
‘ when an olympic gold medallist has something in their sights, nothing stands in their way. in his mind, i think he felt he didn’t have any option.
‘throughout our marriage, for James, it had always been a case of “what next? what next?”. he’d felt a bit lost and this was another goal to aim for.
‘i don’t think either of us was ready to acknowledge at the time that this was the unofficial end, but the fact i didn’t put my foot down tells you where we were in the relationship.
‘ if it had been great, he wouldn’t have been going. it was make or break, and it proved to be the latter.’
this is Beverley’s first interview since the couple announced they were divorcing last year. the decree absolute has yet to be granted.
indeed, the Boat race was the final straw for Beverley who had nursed James, 47, back to health after the horrific road accident ten years ago which left him with lifechanging brain injuries.
hit by the wing mirror of a truck as he cycled across america — on one of his many sporting challenges — her husband, doctors warned Beverley, would be on ‘Planet James’ for a while because of damage to the frontal lobe of his brain.
it was a devastating blow for the national hero who’d won gold twice rowing for Britain in the coxless fours — Sydney 2000 and athens 2004 — and then gone on to row the atlantic, and race to the South Pole.
overnight, Beverley went from being a wife with a sparky, exciting, if exhausting, marriage to a sportsman in his prime, to something closer to a mother, as James struggled to recover.
the brain injuries caused him memory problems, difficulties controlling his emotions, issues with decision- making and exacerbated all the driven, almost selfish, single-minded traits required to become an olympian. By his own admission, he became even more determined to prove himself a second time round, at the expense of his family life. at times, it felt to Beverley like she had another child to manage.
‘i had one husband for eight years and another husband for the next eight years. after the accident, he was not the man i married and it changed the whole dynamic.
‘i became much more maternal, which wasn’t healthy, and it brought out the worst in both of us. But i think we did a really good job of toughing it out for as long as we did,’ says Beverley, who was pregnant with their youngest daughter, trixie, when
James was injured. ‘those first two or three years were truly terrible, with awful peaks and troughs, and it would have been so easy to leave James then, but i loved him enormously, our children were very young and i felt extremely sorry for him because the accident hadn’t been his fault.
‘the sad thing is we were in a really good place before the accident, and i consider it one of our greatest achievements that we managed to struggle on for another eight years. we both have a lot to be proud of, but the odds were always against us.
‘w he ni married James, i thought we’d be together for ever, but the divorce statistics for elite sports people is around 75 per cent, and higher again for marriages affected by brain injury, so put those two together, what chance did we have?’
Beverley, a TV and radio broadcaster who also runs a small business called the happy Birth Club, providing ante-natal courses across three locations in west london, says she was not surprised when she heard ‘on the grapevine’ that James had been seen out dining with attractive young american blonde Jordan Connell, 34, now his partner, a few weeks into his first term at Cambridge.
She insists he did not cheat on her. though they had not yet officially split up, they had long talked about going their separate ways.
‘i knew it would be inevitable because he was this handsome superstar in Cambridge. our relationship had, effectively, been over for some time, and i was quite realistic that he was going to meet someone new,’ she says.
‘So i asked him, “i believe you are seeing someone?” and he just said, “Yes”. i replied, “ok, cool”, thinking “god, that was quick!” but then, actually, “good for him.” there was this sense of “thank god, he’s got someone to keep him company”.
‘James is not very good at being single. it sounds nuts when i say it, but i was genuinely pleased for him.’
Beverley says she’d even be delighted to see James happily remarried.
‘i met Jordan for the first time last year, just before James did Strictly, and we talked for two hours over coffee and i came away feeling as if a weight had been lifted,’ she says.
‘i didn’t realise until then just how much i still worried about him, and if el ti could now hand the baton over to this lovely woman who was smart, capable and competent. ‘he is now her responsibility and i feel i can let go. if there’s ever another call to say James is in a&e, i’d be happy for her to go.’
Beverley’s lack of bitterness over James’s new girlfriend is perhaps down to the fact that she, too, now has a new partner, eco property developer James Pritchett, who, at 32, is 14 years her junior. ‘i had such judgment about age-gap relationships before this,’ she says.
‘i would look at an older man with a younger woman and roll my eyes, but now i can completely see what they were doing. i cannot see any disadvantage to it. James P is 32— a great age for a bloke!’ at 46,
‘I believe you are seeing someone,’ I said. ‘Yes,’ he replied. And I thought: ‘Thank God’