yBC.tv's video: James Cracknell: Rowing the Atlantic

In terms of spending two months on, on a boat with one other person, I think the thing we didn't have beforehand was a shared experience, and absolute trust in each other, because it was the first thing we'd done together, and we'd spent so much time getting everything ready - have you done this, have you passed this course, have you - you know, that we didn't have that sort of thing to for the Olympics and we'd done four years, we'd raced together, we had sacrificed the same things, we'd experienced the same things together and there was trust, whereas you're forming a new relationship in the middle of an ocean and it took us a long time to really get to trust each other. To be able to motivate each other, and to have that shared experience, and as we went along we did have, not only the experience of spending time on a boat together, but actually problem solving together and the trip, yeah physically it wasn't very nice, but it was the ability to problem solve that means you actually get there, because your things will break and you have to reverse engineer them and take them apart and you can't phone the bloke up 'my, my plumbing's gone, can you come round and mend it' - you have to sort it all out yourself, and that's, that's where communication and backing yourself and making the right decision at the right time comes in, in a world of a sportsman, that doesn't happen. A footballer will get transferred from a club in London to a club in north west, and the club probably will sort out their house, they will have got the TV, they will have got the phone, they will have sorted out the heating, they will have - everything will be there for you, so whereas, somebody on their own and having to buy a house when they leave football, they go 'how do you get a phone line?' you know, all these things that have been done for them, and that was partly the difference between rowing where everything’s organised for us as part of the Olympic team, and then sorting our boat to row the Atlantic, you're suddenly having to do everything yourself and that's when you really appreciate your support crew, or if you're, if you're in an office, the team around you that that makes the, the office work. James Cracknell, Double Olympic Champion Interview via Harvey Thorneycroft http://harveythorneycroft.co.uk/