James Cracknell has admitted his successful bid to become the oldest person to win the Boat Race was a “very selfish pursuit”.
The 46-year-old double Olympic gold medallist, who was part of the winning team in Sunday’s race, said he now realises there is more to life than “mucking around in a boat”.
The couple announced their separation last month after 17 years of marriage.
“Now the race is over, I realise there is much more to life than mucking about in a rowing boat,” Cracknell told the Daily Telegraph.
“The last few months have put that into perspective. Rowing and sport aren’t the most important things in life. But to [achieve in sport] you have to be a single-minded person.”
Turner, a TV and radio presenter who has three children with Cracknell, described his move to Cambridge as an “absolute dereliction of parenting and marital duty”.
Writing in the Times, she also said changes in Cracknell’s personality following a brain injury in 2010 had contributed to their break-up.
But Cracknell, now a master’s student at Peterhouse College, Cambridge, said today “a lot of what has happened would have happened if I’d been away studying or not”.
