Former Olympic rower James Cracknell attended his first Conservative party conference in Manchester, after confirming last week he will stand as a Tory MP in the next general election.
The six-time World Champion and two-time Olympic gold medallist will run as the Conservative candidate for Colchester, where MP Will Quince is to stand down.
And Cracknell confirmed to Mancunian Matters that the experience so far has been a “steep learning curve”.
At the conference taking place in Manchester Central, Rishi Sunak is set to confirm the shelving of the northern leg of HS2.
Cracknell said: “If they’re not going to do it with HS2, they need to do it some other way.”
“The cost has got to benefit everyone.”
James Cracknell: “It’s a lot of work”
— Emily Cooper (@emilyecooperr) October 2, 2023
I interviewed Olympic champion and newly announced Tory candidate James Cracknell as he entered the #ConservativePartyConference for the first time in #Manchester
He comments on HS2 and the similarities between rowing and politics 🚣 pic.twitter.com/wj3jSWFEvP
Protester Gareth Kearns, of Stand of Defiance European Movement, said scrapping the high-speed rail line between Birmingham and Manchester whilst holding a conference in the North was a “colossal posh boy joke”.
And he had some advice for newly announced Tory candidate Cracknell: “I think he should go and talk to Richard Walker.”
Walker, the chairman of supermarket chain Iceland, had announced his ambitions to be a Conservative MP, but has since left the party citing he could never support them as a business owner.
“There’s a man who has dodged a bullet,” said Kearns. “And now you have this bloody rower?
“I’m not denigrating athleticism or anything but I don’t think you have to be clever to be an Olympic rower.”
Cambridge graduate James Cracknell says he plans to take the skills he learned through rowing forward into his political career.
He said: “There’s going to be a whole load of us, teamwork, I would say, would be the first thing to get there – it’s a lot of work.”
