Still oarsome! 18 years on from his Olympic heyday, James Cracknell’s in cracking shape for Sunday’s Boat Race (which he hopes to win just days after announcing his divorce)

• Ex-Olympic rower James Cracknell will be in Sunday’s boat race for Cambridge 
• Cracknell, 46, will be by a decade the oldest competitor to take part in its history
• He said: ‘Although I look quite fit and athletic, it’s just a lot less powerful’

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He may appear a little less tanned and more weathered but James Cracknell has clearly aged well over the past 18 years.

Posing for the Daily Mail ahead of Sunday’s Boat Race he looks just as fit as he did in 2001, months after winning his first Olympic gold medal.

When he represents Cambridge, Cracknell, 46, who is studying for a Masters degree at Peterhouse, will be by a decade the oldest competitor to take part in the 190-year history of the event.

A 28-year-old James Cracknell in 2001 (left), the year after he won gold for Great Britain at the Sydney Olympic Games. Cracknell, now 46, (right) strikes the same pose ahead of the weekend’s Boat Race

• EXCLUSIVE: Olympic rowing hero James Cracknell splits with… More than one million workers including police and teachers…

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After winning gold in Sydney in 2000, he repeated the feat in Athens in 2004. He has returned to rowing 13 years after retiring and admits of his frame: ‘Although I look quite fit and athletic, it’s just a lot less powerful.

‘My legs are much thinner. Seventy per cent of the power in rowing comes from the legs. And the shoulders, everything looks like I’ve had the water sucked out of me. 

Last week, Cracknell revealed he and wife Beverley Turner had split

‘I know what I weighed on the morning of the Olympics in 2004, and that was 95.7kg (15st 1lb). And then at the Boat Race weigh-in I was 89kg (14st). 

‘That is effectively a stone of muscle, really, which is quite useful in rowing.’

There is one other change to his body: ‘a few staples in my head’ – a reference to the serious brain injury he suffered in 2010 when a truck hit him while he was cycling across the US. 

In his years away from rowing, he crossed Antarctica and has competed in marathons and triathlons.

Cracknell revealed last week that he and his wife Beverley Turner had split after 17 years of marriage.

But he hopes their three children will be there to greet him – as a winner – on the finish line on Sunday.

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