James Cracknell’s ex-wife Beverley Turner has opened up about how the Olympic rower’s bike crash affected their relationship.
The former Team GB athlete, 46, suffered a skull fracture when a truck hit his bike in 2010 in the US.
He then experienced memory loss and was left with damage to the frontal lobe of the brain, which caused his personality to change.
Cracknell and radio presenter Turner, 45, announced their split in March after 17 years of marriage.
In her first interview since the couple confirmed their break-up, Turner told Lorraine Kelly that her husband became “very different” after the accident and said that she had been “constantly looking for the first [version of Cracknell].”
“We don’t know how the brain works,” she told Kelly on her eponymous ITV morning show.
“James’s injuries were to his frontal lobe, so that’s personality and emotional processing. He was very different. The accident will be 10 years next summer.”
She praised her ex for having come “an incredibly long way” since the crash, “from waking up in a coma to going to university.”
She added that it was “great” that Cracknell was now in a relationship with “someone who didn’t know him before the accident,” explaining: “[If you knew him before] you’re constantly looking for the first person. You see differences.
“If you didn’t know him before, you’d probably think he was perfectly normal. But scruffy and clearly can’t dance, you wouldn’t necessarily think, that’s a guy with a brain injury.”
Discussing their split, Turner said that the pair did their best to “remain amicable for the sake of the children,” as they are parents to son Croyde, 16, and daughters Kiki, 10, and Trixie, eight.
“Even if on days when you really just want to hire an assassin and take each other out,” she joked. “Which I think, anybody getting divorced, you do have those days, course you do. But we know, bigger picture, the children are more important than anything.”
Cracknell became the first celebrity to leave Strictly Come Dancing 2019 last month.
Lorraine airs weekdays on ITV from 8.30am.
