Freddie Flintoff recalls the devastating impact of his Top Gear crash on his health and family in a new Disney+ documentary.
The horrific accident occurred in December 2022 when the former England cricket star was filming for the BBC One motoring show.
What car was Freddie Flintoff driving when he crashed on Top Gear?
Freddie was driving an open-topped three-wheeled Morgan Super 3 at high speed on the test track at Dunsfold Park Aerodrome in Surrey when it flipped over.
Freddie was airlifted to the hospital with severe facial injuries and several broken ribs after being dragged face down along the track for 50 metres.
The married dad-of-four didn’t leave his house for seven months after the crash. But in Flintoff, Freddie addresses the aftermath and consequences of the smash, including the fear he’d ‘lost his face’.
‘I was frightened to death’
Freddie explains in terrifying detail how he felt in the moments of the crash. He recalls: “I remember my head got hit, I got dragged out.”
I was frightened to death.
He continues: “I went over the back of the car and it pulled my face down on the runway, about 50 metres, underneath the car. My biggest fear was, I didn’t think I had a face. I thought my face had come off. I was frightened to death.”
The cricket legend also believes his quick reactions as a sportsman may be the reason he survived.
“As it started going over, I looked at the ground and I knew, if I get hit here on the side [of the head] then I’ll break my neck, or if I get hit on the temple I’m dead. The best chance is to go face down,” he adds.
Undergoing surgery
Surgeon Jahrad Haq operated on Fredde for five hours to help repair his face.
He explains Freddie’s injuries were among the five worst he has come across in 20 years of medicine, likening the reconstruction to a jigsaw with missing pieces.
Mr Haq says: “[Freddie] had a mixture of hard tissue and soft tissue injuries, broken teeth, lost teeth, elements of the upper jaw bone that were also fractured and displaced.
“His soft tissue injuries were very complex. It’s very unusual that you lose soft tissue, that you lose skin, and he’d lost a really significant portion of his upper lip, the skin and some of the underlying muscle and also his lower lip.”
Mr Haq also notes there were added complications. “These wounds were never going to be clean wounds,” he said. “He’s scraped his face along the tarmac. There’s going to be grit, dirt, and the initial surgery took about five hours.”
“You’ve just got to get the anatomy back to how it was in the first place. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle, and almost always all the pieces are there. In this case, they weren’t.”
Wishing he’d died
In a desperately sad admission, Freddie – who has spoken about suffering with anxiety – also reflects on how at points he had wished he hadn’t survived the crash.
“It’s hard,” he says. “After the accident I didn’t think I had it in me to get through. This sounds awful but part of me wishes I had been killed and wishes I had died.
“I didn’t want to kill myself but I was just not wishing, but I was thinking this would’ve been so much easier.”
Freddie adds: “Now I try to take the attitude the sun will come up tomorrow and my kids will still give me a hug. And I’m probably in a better place now.”
Freddie Flintoff crash: Son’s ‘heartbreaking’ reaction
Freddie’s wife Rachael reveals how she ‘pulled herself together’ and wasn’t emotional when first seeing her husband after the crash, for his sake.
“When I did see him, I walked in the room, and he was just in the bed. He was bandaged up. Like his eyes, I’ve never seen someone so scared in their eyes. And he just stared at me. And I just think he was looking at me to know how bad he was,” she shares.
Rachael also describes how she briefed their children to be similarly “strong”, but promised their dad’s condition would improve.
Freddie, meanwhile, says their youngest son was ‘scared’ of his dad.
“You want to be there for the kids and you don’t want to miss stuff. Fortunately I’ve got four of them,” he says.
Freddie adds: “I spent all this time with the three-and-a-half-year-old and he won’t come near me. He’d get frightened of my face, frightened of me. That was heartbreaking.”
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‘Triggering’ reason he no longer speaks to Paddy McGuinness
Freddie co-hosted the now-shelved Top Gear with Paddy McGuinness and Chris Harris from 2019 up until the accident. In Flintoff, he explains why he no longer speaks to his fellow presenters.
“We’ve been in contact,” he admits. “When I saw Chris we hugged each other, he got upset and I got a little bit upset.”
Freddie continues: “I feel bad I haven’t been more in contact with him and Paddy. I think there were some comments that I’ve not spoken with Paddy for a while and part of it is for myself a little bit.
“I hate the word ‘triggering’… but I’m worried about that. It’s also something that has stopped because of what’s happened to me. Their careers have been halted as well.
“So I feel bad for them and also it’s like what happened gets dragged up enough in my own head without adding to that.”
Read more: Inside Freddie Flintoff’s family life with model wife Rachael
Flintoff will be available to stream on Disney+ from tomorrow (Friday April 25).
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