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Chapter 14
James Cracknell
One of the most interesting and complex “Brilliant Minds” that I have worked with is James Cracknell whom I regard as a friend.
We all know James for his exploits as a sportsman, he won two Olympic Gold medals and six World Championship rowing titles He went on to reinvent himself undertaking the most audacious challenges around the world. However, James could not have predicted what would be around the corner for him at this stage of his life and this fundamentally changed the person whom I knew.
There are very few people I know who are so open about the cliff face that he then faced having made this decision to go back to university. His long-term objective was to succeed academically and to win the boat race and to prove to his family that he could be the man he was before his accident. However, his life changed forever. What follows is a raw and honest summary of his first three months at Cambridge, when he realised how low he was and whether he could dictate his life or take control.
By Harvey Thorneycroft
Chapter 14: James Cracknell
I want to continue my fascination of the brain which was inspired by the demystification that Pete Lindsay had given me.
I used to wake up every Monday morning with this knot in my stomach when I was running my own business. The thought was I am never going to be able to bring the requisite about of sales each week required to cover our costs. We were employing people and in both businesses that I was involved I had front line business development responsibilities. It was not until meeting Pete and him explaining that it was normal to feel these thoughts and he helped me to develop coping mechanisms to deal with them, that I was truly able to understand that super biological computer that we carry around in our skull that is over 500 million years in the making.
We did not have sports psychologists when I was playing rugby. I finished in the Premiership in 2001, twenty years ago, and now it is commonplace as Andy Strauss articulated. The knowledge we now have about our brain is so much more advanced and continues to progress and it is an area that I am fascinated with and will go on to describe those “Brilliant Minds” that have had a huge influence on me in the last 10 years really since the 2012 Olympics and meeting Mark Bawden and Pete Lindsay. We have been lucky to meet world class neuroscientists and sleep experts who complement everything we have understood from a physiological, mental, and psychological perspective. The great link is all these disciplines are inter-dependent of each other.
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