Cricketing legend Freddie Flintoff suffered horrific injuries when he crashed a Morgan Super 3 car while filming the BBC’s Top Gear in December 2022
Andrew ‘Freddie’ Flintoff thought he was dead after his Top Gear car crash – and even now sometimes thinks it “would be easier” if he didn’t survive. In a raw and honest new documentary the England cricket legend details exactly what happened in the December 2022 accident and also suggested TV bosses had treated him “like a piece of meat” in the run up to the crash.
Freddie, 47, sustained serious facial injuries which have left permanent scars – and he admits he relives the accident every night when he tries to sleep, after choosing to watch back video footage of it in the aftermath.
The cricketing legend was filming the BBC ’s Top Gear in 2022 and was in a Morgan Super 3 car with no roof which flipped. He opted in a split second to land face first as he thought otherwise he would break his neck or be killed.
But afterwards he though “my face has come off” and his wife Rachel even braced their children for the shock before they saw him for the first time after the car crash. His youngest Preston “wouldn’t come near” him and Freddie says it broke his heart that his son was “frightened of his face”.
Looking back at the crash at Dunsfold Park in Surrey, Freddie says: “I remember everything about it. In some ways, it’d be easier if I’d gone unconscious and then been unconscious for a week or two and then you wake up and your stitches are out and everything. But I remember everything.
“I think about it now, back in the car, it were a three wheeler, a reinforcement windscreen and a bar covering half me back. So I’m exposed. We’re probably doing about 40 or 45, they were showing me how to get the car going sideways, and the wheel came up at the front.
“It’s a funny thing rolling a car because there’s a point of no return, and everything slows down. It’s so weird. I used to play cricket. Used to bat. You get point four of a second to make your mind up where the ball was going. What shot you gonna play? Are you gonna move your feet?
“And as it[car] started going over, I looked at the ground. I knew if I get hit here on the side[of his head] I break my neck, on the temple I’m dead. My best chance is face down. I remember hitting and my head got hit and I got dragged out, and the car went over, and I went over the back of the car, and then pulled face down on the runway for about 50 metres underneath the car and then it hit the grass and flipped back in.
“I thought I was dead because I was conscious. I couldn’t see anything. I was thinking is that? Is that it for the rest of my days. My hat came over my eyes, so I pulled it off and thought, no I am not, this is not heaven. And then I looked down and blood was coming down. And my biggest fear was I didn’t think I had a face. I thought my face had come off. I was frightened to death.”
Freddie says the accident has left huge mental wounds as well as physical. He tells the Disney+ documentary: “I still live it every day, see the car every night when I go to bed, and it’s so vivid. Not slept the same since.
“It’s a movie in my head and I have watched it as well. In car footage. I’ve seen it. I demanded it. I wanted validation for myself. This is why I am feeling that, this is why I am so bad.”
Freddie adds that he used to use visualisation in cricket to “practice inside his head” so much so that he could feel it. He adds: “Problem is, when you relate it to this[crash], even the memories of it are real to the point where now I’m talking about it and I’m getting a bit jittery, and I can, I can feel the pain in this side of my face. I can feel the pains. It is like a bit of a curse really.”
Freddie does not directly attack Top Gear by name in the film, but he hits out at TV bosses. He says: “I think that is the danger that TV falls into. And I found out the hard way eventually.
“It’s always more. Everybody wants more. Everybody wants that thing that nobody’s seen before. Everybody wants that bigger stunt. Everybody wants to dig that little bit deeper.
“Everybody wants an exclusive. Everybody wants, oh, let’s have that near miss, because then that’ll get viewers. Everything’s about viewers, always, always.
“And I should have been clever on this, because I learned this in sport as well, with all the injuries and all the injections and all the times I got sent out on a cricket field and just treated like a piece of meat. That’s TV and sport. I think that’s where it’s quite similar. You’re just a commodity. You’re just a piece of meat.”
At his lowest on screen Flintoff seems to still be struggling with the aftermath of the accident. As he previously revealed in BBC programmed Field of Dreams, he barely left the house for the first seven months, except to attend hospitals and for dental work.
Speaking now several years on from what happened, he says: “After the accident, I didn’t think I had it in me to get through. This sounds awful. Part of me thinks I should have been killed. Part of me thinks I wish I had died. I didn’t want to kill myself, I won’t mistake the two things, but I just, I was not wishing I was thinking this would have been so much easier.
“Now, I try to take the attitude, you know, the sun will come up with tomorrow, and then my kids will still give me a hug, and I’m probably in a better place now.”
The film does also highlight Freddie’s incredible cricket achievements including the 2005 Ashes victory with England. And he seems more positive about the future after taking up cricket coaching and getting a new set of teeth fitted. He is now the head coach of England Lions, the second string of the national men’s team.
“I’ve got these teeth. This is it, this is what I am left with,” he says with a grin as he plays golf with friends. His wife Rachel says cricket and his love of the game have helped to “save” him.
The one area of his life he has not fully returned to is TV and he admits he is yet to fully reunite with the Top Gear team of Chris Harris and Paddy McGuinness.
He says: “So Chris, we saw each other. He got upset. I got a bit upset. It was really nice to see him. I feel bad I haven’t been in more contact with him and Paddy. Part of it is for myself a little bit. I hate the word triggering, but I’m worried about that.
“It’s also something stopped, I suppose, in some ways, because of what happened to me. Like their careers have been altered as well. So I feel not guilty, but I feel bad for him. And also, what happened gets dragged up. I have enough in me head without adding to that.”
Chris Harris claimed in September 2024 he expressed safety concerns to Top Gear bosses before Freddie’s crash. In response BBC Studios, which makes Top Gear, referred to an independent investigation in 2023 which found the show had complied with industry best practice, but that there were “learnings which would need to be rigorously applied” if Top Gear returned.
The show is currently being rested after Freddie’s accident and bosses reached a financial settlement with him worth millions.
*Flintoff Premieres on Disney+ on Friday (April 25).
Source: Mirror
Leave a Reply