I thought my face had been ripped off after it was dragged 150ft along Tarmac in Top Gear crash, says Freddie Flintoff
FREDDIE Flintoff has recalled how he thought his face was torn off in his horrific Top Gear crash.
The star, 47, was dragged nose down for 50 metres in the 2022 horror in Dunsfold, Surrey. He said: “I was frightened to death.”
Freddie believed his time was up in his crash, saying: “I thought I was dead. I was conscious but I couldn’t see anything. I was thinking, ‘Is that it?’ ”
The lightning-quick instincts honed as an Ashes-winning cricketer kicked in as he moved his head to avoid breaking his neck.
But that meant his face bore the brunt of the injuries, ripping open his nose, cheek and lip and knocking out most of his front teeth.
Recalling how his three-wheeled Morgan car flipped in the 2022 accident, Freddie, tells Disney+ documentary Flintoff: “As it started going over I looked at the ground and I knew if I get hit here on this side and I break my neck, or I get hit on the temple, I’m dead.
“My best chance is go face down. Then I remember hitting and then my head got hit, but 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 about 50m underneath the car.
“And then it hit the grass and then flipped back in.
“I thought I was dead because I was conscious but I couldn’t see anything. I was thinking, ‘Is that it, is that it?’ You know what I mean? Just black for the rest of my days?
“But I had my hat come over my eyes! So I pulled my hat up and I thought, ‘I’m on the Top Gear track — this isn’t heaven!’
It comes as….
- Freddie hits out at the BBC saying ‘they treated me like a piece of meat in bid for higher ratings’ as he slams Top Gear stunts
- Freddie admits ‘I wished I’d been killed‘ in devastating confession after Top Gear accident in his new doc
- Freddie relives crash ‘every night’ and ‘hasn’t slept the same since’
- Heartbroken Freddie reveals his ‘frightened’ son, 3, ‘wouldn’t come near him’ as horrifying face wounds healed
- Jack Whitehall reveals bulimia battle as he praises ‘brave’ Freddie Flintoff on documentary
“And then I just looked down and blood started coming down
“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 was filming the BBC1 show with co-presenters Chris Harris and Paddy McGuinness when he got in the Morgan supercar.
But as he raced along the track at Dunsfold Aerodrome in Surrey a wheel came off and the car overturned.
Freddie said: “We were probably doing about 40 or 45mph. They were showing me how to get the car going sideways, and a wheel came off at the front.
When you roll a car everything slows down.. it’s so weird
Freddie
“It’s a funny thing rolling a car because there’s the point of no return and everything slows down. It’s so weird.
“I think it was half an hour, 40 minutes, just in agony until the air ambulance came. It was just, ‘This can’t be happening to me, it can’t be happening.’
“I remember everything about it. In some ways it would have been easier if I’d gone unconscious, and then been unconscious for a week or two and you wake up and all your stitches are out and everything.
“I think about it now, back in that car. It was a three-wheeler with a reinforced windscreen, and a bar which was about half way up my back, so I’m exposed.”
While lucky to survive Freddie admits: “After the accident I didn’t think I had it in me to get through.
“This sounds awful . . . part of me wishes I’d been killed, part of me thinks I wish I’d died.
“I didn’t want to kill myself, I wouldn’t mistake the two things. But I was thinking; this would have been so much easier.”
Freddie was airlifted to St George’s Hospital in South West London where he was operated on by surgeon Mr Jahrad Haq.
He said that in 20 years of his career, Freddie’s injuries were among the worst he had ever seen.
The documentary shows graphic images of how so much of his lip had been torn away, exposing some of his teeth.
Mr Haq said: “He had a mixture of hard tissue and soft tissue injuries — broken teeth, lost teeth.
“Elements of the upper jawbone that were also fractured and displaced.
Part of me wished I’d been killed.. it would have been easier
Freddie
“His soft tissue injuries were very complex. It’s very unusual that you lose soft tissue, that you lose skin.
‘Soldered my face’
“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.
“These wounds were never going to be clean wounds either as he’s scraped his face along the tarmac.
“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. Almost always all the pieces are there in the first place. In Andrew’s case they weren’t.”
Freddie had to have a substantial skin graft adjoining his cheek, lip and nose, and months without many of his teeth.
During his 18-month recovery he has had surgery under various experts including more work with Mr Haq.
Freddie tells the documentary: “He’s done more and more and he’s done steroid injections into the scars, which is not pleasant.
“I had something done which is this plasma where they effectively soldered my face.
“But it’ll never give me what I had back. I wasn’t happy with it then but now I realise it wasn’t too bad, was it? You just want people to be honest half the time — to say yeah, it is a f***ing mess, isn’t it?”
Freddie is followed by the film crew as he has a string of hospital appointments and extensive dental work to reinstall teeth.
The dad of four, wed to Rachael, is also seen in his Cheshire home where he became a virtual hermit for a year as he struggled with the aftermath of the accident.
He added: “I have moments where I forget, I’m just living, and it’s so nice. And then you just get a stark reminder, I get a feeling on my face because it’s all tight and it’s different, I’ve got no teeth, or something will fall out of my mouth when I’m eating.
“Or I just look in the mirror and it all comes back.
“You say your face is your identity, but how many times do we hear, like, people say it’s what’s inside that counts, it’s not how you look . . . b***s! You know what I mean?”
Aside from the psychological impact, the documentary reveals how Freddie had to deal with a number of physical problems in his recovery.
It includes blood coming out of his mouth unexpectedly, struggling to eat or even feel objects he bites down on.
He has also lost sensation in parts of his lips and struggles to smile like he used to.
Freddie has bounced back as England Lions cricket coach and in BBC1’s award-nominated Freddie’s Field of Dreams — which saw him take a team of disadvantaged young cricketers to India.
‘I’m not trying to hide my scars’
But he admits he has found the return to the spotlight difficult, with fans wanting selfies with him.
He tells the documentary: “The picture thing I never really liked anyway, but now its slightly different, especially when they take a selfie, I don’t want to smile because my lips are like that. I look miserable. I’m not trying to, I’m trying to look mildly amused.
“I start thinking about the way they’re thinking about the way I look. Are they just being polite? I see the reaction when they see me for the first time and, yeah, its hard.”
But he adds: “I’m not trying to hide my scars, I’m just trying to take a bit out of it. I wouldn’t say I’m embracing them, but it’s a case of, ‘Don’t make them show.’
He signs off: “This is it now. This is what I’m left with.”