Atlantic Rowing Race 2005 - Organised by Woodvale-Events



Worried? You bet, say the odd couple with an ocean to cross
Sept 05 2005	By Cassandra Jardine

James Cracknell, winner of two Olympic gold medals, will soon discover whether gliding down a shallow glassy lake has anything in common with rowing naked - yes naked - across the Atlantic in a 23ft tub. For the pin-up of the GB boat, who was so fed up with rowing that he announced his retirement for a year after the Athens Olympics, this will be one hell of a test. When he sets off on Nov 27, all he will have for company, apart from the occasional sea bird, will be Ben Fogle, the Taransay Castaway turned television presenter who is, by his own admission, "useless" at rowing.
		Into the unknown: James Cracknell [left] and Ben Fogle consider the challenge ahead
Together, this odd pair - who scarcely know each other - will be competing against 30 or so others in the 2,535-mile Atlantic Rowing Race. Set up by Chay Blyth, the first Briton to row the Atlantic, as the "supreme mental and physical challenge", the two previous races in 1997 and 2001 have shown that it does indeed, as Blyth hoped, test its competitors "to the limit". Many of those who have started have had to be rescued, suffering from mental or physical collapse - so there is an air of "what-have-I-done" in the bar of a west London sports club where Cracknell (33, 6ft 4in, 15st) and Fogle (30, 6ft, 13st) are filling in their entry forms. "Some competitors have been preparing for this for two years," says Fogle. "Our boat isn't even built yet." "It says here that you can use additional sheets to list your sponsors," says Cracknell. "We haven't got any yet." Superficially, the two men appear to come from the same mould. Both are large, well-spoken, blond and British - and they ooze the Right Stuff. Psychologically, however, they couldn't be more different. Easy-going, slightly bumbling Fogle, who starts our chat by knocking his coffee cup flying, is the polar opposite of Cracknell, who has the reputation for being competitive. Before Athens, Cracknell and the laid-back giant Matthew Pinsent are said to have been moved from the coxless pairs to the four-man boat because they rubbed each other up so badly. So how will Cracknell and Fogle survive six weeks or more alone at sea? Married couples have been unable to cope with one another under such circumstances. Trusted friendships have buckled and rowers have been winched off. One double murderer even attempted it with his parole officer. These two, who only got in a boat together for the first time last week, are determinedly optimistic. "We aren't married, so we can't get divorced," says Fogle. Cracknell grins. A major source of tension will no doubt be that the boat will move considerably faster when Cracknell rows than when Fogle does. As yet, Fogle doesn't even know how to use a rowing machine properly: "Make the legs do more of the work, and get the rhythm right so your knees and arms don't get in the way of one another," says Cracknell.

Sheepishly, Fogle displays his "soft, baby hands", half the size of Cracknell's and covered in callouses from training. "I've never done manual work before," he says. As the weaker member of the duo by a hefty margin, he hopes he can be useful in other ways. "I've done several endurance tests - living on an island where there was nothing to do for a year, running the Marathon des Sables - so I'll be bringing some mental experience.

"And I know about the sea, having spent years in the Royal Navy Reserve. It is not always the best rowers who make it. You can row for hundreds of miles, but if you haven't caught the current, you are wasting your time."

Cracknell nods. "When I told my sister about this race, she said that Ben was not only very attractive" - Ben beams - "he was also, as a castaway, very good at conflict resolution and being positive. I hope that my competitive spirit is slightly tempered by knowing I am limited in other areas."

The relationship between this pair should make for interesting viewing. They won't be able to keep their squabbles secret since the BBC is attaching a camera to the boat and there will be another in the tiny cabin that doubles as a "rant room".

Unlike other reality TV shows, the ordeal this pair faces will be so gruelling that veterans have advised them that they will need to consume 8,000 to 10,000 calories a day (four times a normal daily intake) to keep rowing and, even so, they are likely to lose two to three stone. By comparison, Cracknell explains, when training for the Olympics he was consuming 6,000 calories a day and maintaining his weight. He fears that such vast quantities of food will generate a wind problem of a very localised nature.

To make it still more gripping, the pair of them, once out of sight of land, will be nude. This is not, they explain, a bare-bottomed attempt to boost ratings, but a necessity of life at sea. "When the sun dries wet salty clothes, it turns them to sandpaper," says Fogle. "So you get terrible chafing in the groin." On film, they will be demanding some tactful blurring. "I want pixels right down to my knees," says Cracknell.

They haven't quite worked out yet how they will get over the embarrassment. "I imagine it will be an issue at first," says Cracknell. "Perhaps we should stand up and introduce our bodies to one another like at an AA meeting."

They will, however, be wearing plenty of sunblock as their route from La Gomera in the Canaries to Antigua in the Caribbean should, if they find the trade winds, take them down to the current that runs east/west along the Equator. Competitors are not allowed even a small canopy, in case anyone should attempt to use it as a sail. So their only shelter from the sun will be a tiny cabin where one of them can rest while the other rows; a pattern they must keep up day and night.

Before they go, they are taking courses on everything from crashing in a helicopter to plastering up broken limbs. They have tough decisions to make about how many spare oars to take, whether to weigh themselves down with a top class desalination plant, and to use satellite navigation or attempt to steer by the stars. Out at sea, there will be further dilemmas, such as whether to risk their lives in shark-infested waters by scraping the barnacles off the bottom of the boat so they can go faster.

For all the boyish glee with which they recount these worries, the race sounds so tiring that the inevitable question arises: why are they doing it? Since Fogle was the prime mover, I ask him first. "Because it's there," he says glibly.

A competitor who tried and failed described the urge as a "need to authenticate your own self-image", but Fogle seems scarcely to need to prove himself since his last five years have been one long success story.

After the charm and resilience he showed on Castaway, the BBC has showered Ben (son of television vet Bruce Fogle) with programmes to present and the former picture editor of Tatler magazine has seen his earnings rocket. He also has a girlfriend - Marina Hunt, a children's party organiser - of whom he talks fondly. So why go and risk his life in a boat so tiny that it could easily be obliterated by ships passing in the night?

"I suppose that the last five years have been so busy, I've been to amazing places and seen amazing things that I haven't had time to sit back and think, 'Wow' and wonder where I'm going."

But, still, why row across the Atlantic? "A psychologist might say that I was never very sporty at school - James, close your ears. I was always the last one to be chosen for a team. Bryanston was a sporty school and the girls didn't take much of a fancy to you if you didn't do sport. Then I tried drama [his mother, actress Julia Foster, appeared with Michael Caine in Alfie] and I didn't make a success of that either. But that would be going too deep. I just love obscure challenges."

Fogle has been dreaming of this one for years, gaining inspiration from tales like that of Debra Veale, the diminutive PE teacher who completed the race solo after her 6ft 5in international rower husband, Andrew, developed a phobia of the huge waves. Such feats appeal to Fogle's desire to break away from the humdrum.

Unfortunately, none of his friends shared his dream. But Fogle is one of life's uncrushables. So, a year ago, when he found himself in the same room as James Cracknell at a party, he bounced up to the rower and asked the newly crowned double Olympic champion if he would like to be his blind date.

"I said no," says Cracknell, looking up from form-filling and taking up the story. "I had just done the final in Athens. I had heard of the race and didn't like the conditions; it seemed like a long time to be rowing.

"But I thought about it for a few months and decided that it would be good to use the fitness I had worked at for the Olympics and that this was perhaps the last occasion in my life when I could get away to do something like this. My son, Croyde, will be two in October and, although I shall miss him a lot, I know that I'd have more of a struggle to leave him if he was three. It is also a rare opportunity to have time away from the hassle of everyday life."

He needs to think, he says, and away from the demands of his mobile phone, he will ponder whether to compete at Beijing in 2008. Cracknell's dilemma is that he doesn't "just" want to be a rower. "For 15 years, I've used nothing but my brawn and now I want to use my brain. I'd like to do something else, but I haven't yet identified where I'm headed."

Rowing has dominated the 15 years since he left Kingston Grammar school. He went to Reading University; he worked briefly as a geography teacher - useful for hooking into currents and trade winds; he then spent several years deep in debt as he struggled to become a champion, only to have the heartbreak of being prevented by tonsillitis from competing at Atlanta in 1996.

Since he won gold, life has been easier. "It's nice being able to go to a supermarket and not look at the price of food," he says. Lucozade and Adidas, his sponsors, have given him two years' grace. He would like to make a career out of writing, commentating - in fact, anything other than rowing - but the past year hasn't been easy. Injury prevented him taking part in the London marathon and, much as he loathes training, he misses the fun of competing.

Like Steve Redgrave, who instructed others to shoot him if he set foot in a boat after Sydney, he may yet find that the urge to win another medal triumphs over his wish for a comfortable domestic life with his wife of three years, the television sports presenter Beverley Turner.

When he completes this race, he says, he will decide whether to train for Beijing.

There's no question but that he relishes a challenge. When asked how long it will take them to cross the Atlantic, he is quick to quote the record of 40 days, 5hrs and 31 mins. "We aren't expecting to win," interjects Fogle. Cracknell corrects him: "I think we want to push ourselves as hard as we can." From the set of his jaw and the flash in his eye, it is clear that he always expects to win.

While Fogle's biggest worry about the race is how he will manage without a proper night's sleep, Cracknell's is that Ben's lack of speed will bring out the worst in his nature: "It's my biggest downfall. I'm used to knowing within 0.1 of a second how long a race will take me. If it is not going right, I could get insular and a bit negative. One team told me that they didn't speak for two whole weeks."

They now have just under three months to get everything ready. As we speak, Ben is arranging for a rowing machine to be flown out to Namibia where it will be trailed from one campsite to another while he films a second series of Wild in Africa. "I ought to put on two stone, but it mustn't just be my tummy," he says, looking nervously at Cracknell.

They still have to decide exactly what to take on the voyage. Every CD and slice of Christmas cake will make the job of rowing harder. Yet they must have treats to keep them going. "The minutiae of life are going to loom large. I know I'll be looking forward to a piece of chocolate," says Fogle. "Chocolate is cropping up a lot," says Cracknell, amused but stern. "We will be eating dried food."

They both know that each other's annoying habits are going to grate. "With Matthew Pinsent it used to drive me mad that every time he ate his cereal he tapped his teeth with his spoon. Luckily we won't have any cereal on board. It's better that we don't know each other, as there will be more to discover," says Cracknell.

"My aim is to make sure that James enjoys it," says Fogle, diplomatically.