When Andrew ‘Freddie’ Flintoff realised the open-topped, three-wheeled vehicle he was speeding in, while filming a stunt for Top Gear, was about to roll, he faced several terrifying choices.
“As I started going over, I looked at the ground and I knew that if I got hit on the side of my head, I’ll break my neck,” Freddie, 47, recounts in his shocking new Disney+ documentary, Flintoff.
“If I get hit on the temple, I’m dead. I knew then that my best chance was to go face down.” The accident generated headlines around the world.
The knockabout English cricketing superstar and TV host, who also won the first Australian season of I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! in 2015 – was lucky to survive the accident at Dunsfold Park Aerodrome in the UK on December 13, 2022.
But Freddie Flintoff’s accident has left the dad of four with life-changing injuries, both physically and mentally.
“I got pulled face down along the runway, for about 50 metres, underneath the car,” Freddie explains.
After being airlifted to a London hospital, with severe facial injuries – his top lip was almost entirely torn off, and he broke his jaw and several ribs – Freddie underwent an initial five-hour surgery to commence his treatment.
One of his surgeons described Freddie’s injuries as within the “top five” worst he’d ever seen.
For almost the next 12 months, Freddie became a recluse in his home, only leaving to attend hospital appointments.
As he frankly admits, in Flintoff, “after the accident, I didn’t think I had it in me to get through. It sounds awful, but part of me wished I’d have been killed. I didn’t want to kill myself, I won’t mistake the two, but I was thinking it might have been easier if I’d died.”
That stark admission will shock fans because Freddie has always presented as a larrikin – the wildly talented English cricketer who played – and partied – like an Australian!
As an all-rounder, he was instrumental in England’s victory over Australia in the 2005 Ashes series. It was the first time the English team had held the iconic urn in almost 20 years.
The Australian captain at the time, Ricky Ponting, described Freddie as “the best [bowler] I ever faced”.
When he retired from the sport in 2010, Freddie quickly transitioned into a successful TV career and landed his “dream” job co-hosting Top Gear in 2019.
His wife Rachael, whom he married in 2005, and four kids, Holly, 20, Corey, 19, Rocky, 17, and Preston, five, supported him every step of the way.
But then the accident changed everything.
“I thought I had died, I thought I was gone,” Freddie also recalls in the documentary.
Over the course of the 90-minute film, Freddie admits he still has trouble sleeping because he relives the accident in his mind, over and over again.
But, he adds, as the months and now years have gone by, he’s “coming to terms” with what happened.
In the past 12 months, he’s made a tentative return to some TV work in the UK, and in September, he was appointed as head coach of the England Lions cricket development team.
“I’m trying to find out what I am,” Freddie says.
“But I try to take the attitude that the sun will come up tomorrow, and my kids will still hug me. I’m in a better place now.”
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