Freddie Flintoff has revealed that he feared that his face had “come off” as a result of a horrific Top Gear car crash that required him to undergo a five-hour operation. The cricket star and TV presenter opens up about his ordeal in his Disney+ documentary Flintoff, which shows graphic images of his injuries immediately after the crash.
In December 2022, Andrew “Freddie” Flintoff was airlifted to hospital after suffering serious facial injuries and broken ribs after crashing a car during the filming of Top Gear at Dunsfold Park Aerodrome.
Explaining the extent of Freddie’s injuries in the documentary, his surgeon Jahrad Haq tells the cameras that they were “very complex”. He adds: “His injuries, over the past 20 years of seeing Maxillofacial trauma, I would probably put in the top five.”
Jahrad continues: “He 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 also complex. He had lost a really significant portion of his upper lip, the skin and some of the underlying muscle and also his lower lip.”
In the documentary, Freddie – real name Andrew – reveals how his face was dragged along the tarmac after the car he was driving flipped over. “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,” he says.
“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.”
He added that he thought he had died but realised that his hat had come over his eyes during the crash. “I just looked down and blood started coming down. My biggest fear was I didn’t think I’d have a face. I thought my face had come off. I was frightened to death,” he says.
Freddie’s surgeon Jahrad shared how the cricket star was in surgery for five hours due to his extensive wounds. “You’ve just got to get the anatomy back to how it was in the first place. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle and usually almost all the puzzle pieces are there – in Andrew’s case, they weren’t,” he says.
Freddie also revealed on the Jonathan Ross show that he didn’t leave the house for eight months after the crash, telling the presenter: “Afterwards, obviously there’s the physical scars that I’ve got. But then the mental side of it. I didn’t leave the house for probably six or eight months. The only times I was leaving the house was for medical appointments and surgeries.”
Flintoff is available to stream on Disney+ from Friday 25 April.
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