James Cracknell has never been afraid of a challenge. After winning two Olympic golds as part of the Great British rowing team, his adventures have taken him across the Atlantic, on foot for mile upon mile of tarmac, sand and patchwork field and even into the emergency room via a cycling accident. His movements are unpredictable, so his most recent decision to take the reigns of the men’s programme at Vesta Rowing Club – whose name is derived from the Greek Goddess of the home – should be unsurprisingly surprising.
Vesta have stood in the shadow of their neighbours at both Thames and London Rowing Clubs for several years. Red box upon red box has returned to the Putney Embankment, yet none have passed through Vesta’s doors since 1981. Cracknell’s first task is to arrest the momentum seized by this famous old club’s perennial rivals. “Sitting here in Vesta, you can see Thames over there and London down there with bucketloads of eights and a huge number of successful athletes,” he said. “We will have to punch above our weight to qualify and race at Henley (Royal Regatta). I have been very honest with the guys; this is the first programme I have led, but I think I know what rowing is supposed to look like. We should be competitive if we can get a solid mentality off the water and transfer that into the boat – with some racing nous and a hardened edge.”
With their Putney rivals sweeping up all the domestic honours available to club rowers – including all four club titles at Henley Royal Regatta – the ambition in 2025 has to be tempered. “We want to ensure we qualify crews for all three men’s club Trophies at Henley Royal Regatta,” explained Cracknell. “Overall, though, I want the athletes who leave here to be better than when they arrived. If that is the central objective, the racing will take care of itself.”
Having experienced both The Boat Race and national team training regimes, the learnings that Cracknell can bring to a club programme are vast. “At Cambridge, the mentality was obviously to secure your seat in the Blue Boat, but you also wanted everyone else to do as well as they could to beat Oxford,” he said. “That is what I want to bring to Vesta; concentrate on your progression but support everyone else. Back yourself that your fastest will get you there, but you want the best possible versions of your teammates with you for the ride.”
Cracknell’s journey to running a heavyweight men’s programme is – obviously – remarkable. Several marathons – most of which were completed in under three hours – a couple of races across the Atlantic, triathlons, sports broadcasting gigs, columns in the Daily Telegraph, a fleeting political campaign for an ailing Conservative party and a stint on Strictly – this is a man who is never comfortable sitting still. The accident he suffered on his bike in 2010 – which could quite easily have killed him – shaped the decision to don the Light Blue of Cambridge.“When I had my accident, a lot of people were asking me if I was actually OK,” he explained. “I wanted to prove myself and ensure those questions need not be asked anymore, so I took on the public health degree at Cambridge and wanted to row in The Boat Race. I was probably the last person into the boat, but the influence I could have over the younger guys and the guidance I could provide was something I enjoyed.”
To further his coaching education, Cracknell was in line to support old coach Juergen Grobler in his stewardship of the British team leading up to the Tokyo Olympic Games, before COVID-19 delayed the racing and Grobler parted ways with British Rowing in somewhat unceremonious fashion. “The issue is that I need to pay a mortgage and sustain a life here in London, so when the opportunity at Vesta came up, I thought this could be an exciting new challenge,” said Cracknell. “I also resonated with the insurgency, the need to turn the tide, the potential to take a project and evolve what it means to row at Vesta.”
The club approach to rowing is unique and something that Cracknell found compelling. “There are a lot of nuances in how you build a programme but also how you maintain it,” he said. “In the national squad, I had one boat, one blade, one spot in the changing room. At Vesta, people muck in together – you’re constantly switching up combinations, trying new things, blending personalities together and trying to build boats that aren’t just fast but are also eligible for the various rules and regulations that British Rowing have in place.
Filippi have been long-standing supporters of Vesta Rowing Club, with the squads consistently training and racing in a range of our boats. Graham Hunter, club captain at Vesta, explained that Filippi’s reputation as reliable and a proven recipe for success makes them an obvious fit. “At Vesta, we row Filippi because they are a tried and tested brand and they provide a great shell for stability on the Tideway while also being fast and streamlined on the lakes,” he explained. “We have seen that they last a long time and we are able to recycle the slightly older shells when we get a new boat down to our intermediate and novice programs. Filippi have also proven they care about the quality of the shell they are sending out and have always been very helpful through the process.”
Filippi have supported Olympic gold-winning programmes down to clubs lifting themselves off the ground with a handful of inexperienced athletes. Vesta’s challenge – under the guidance of Cracknell – will be to develop a winning culture and become competitive with the institutions around them who are constantly pushing the boundary of club rowing in the UK. There is a lot of opportunity but the personal development is what matters most to Cracknell as he begins to get comfortable in his new home: “Fundamentally, rowing is about getting halfway down Chiswick Eyot and realising you’ve got further to row than you have energy left, so what are you going to do about it? Helping the guys answer that question is what really motivates me to be here.”
