Freddie Flintoff says it would have been 'so much easier' if he'd died in Top Gear crash

Freddie Flintoff says it would have been 'so much easier' if he'd died in the Top Gear crash.

Disney+'s new documentary, Flintoff, follows the former England cricketer in his lengthy recovery in the weeks and months after the horrific accident.

Opening up for the first time in true detail about what happened to him on that fateful day in December 2022, the 47-year-old has revealed how it's impacted his life and continues to do so today.

In the past, he had been involved in a number of risky situations, famously bungee jumping off an enormous dam while sitting in a Rover Metro.

But recalling the event itself, Freddie explains that while it wasn't supposed to be a particularly dangerous stunt, thing quickly went wrong.

"I think about it now, back in that car," he says, taking himself back to the crash. "It was a three-wheeler. We were probably doing about 40/45mph, they were showing me how to get the car going sideways, and the wheel came off at the front. It’s a funny thing rolling a car, the point of no return. And everything slows down, it’s so weird."

And that's the moment his life changed forever, with the father-of-four being flipped out of the car and over the back, before being pulled underneath and dragged face down for 50 metres along the tarmac.

At first, Freddie says he thought he'd died.

"I thought I was dead, because I was conscious but I couldn’t see anything," he admits. "I was thinking, ‘Is that it? Is that it?’ You know what I mean, just all black for the rest of my days?

"My hat came over my eyes, so I pulled my hat up and I thought, ‘I’m not, am I? On the f**king Top Gear track. This is not heaven’.

Freddie Flintoff was thrown out of the three-wheeler on the Top Gear track in December 2022 (Disney+)

"And then I looked down and blood just started coming down. And my biggest fear was, I didn’t think I’d had a face. I thought my face had come off. I was frightened to death."

And in his darkest moments, Freddie admits that he thought he might have been better off dying in the crash rather than having to go through everything that followed, including being there for his own children while he was in so much pain both mentally and physically.

He bravely says: "After the accident, I didn’t think I had it in me to get through. This sounds awful, part of me wishes I had been killed, part of me thinks, 'I wish I had died'.

"I didn’t want to kill myself, don’t mistake the two things, but I was thinking, 'This would have been so much easier'."

After spending 30-40 minutes in agony after the crash, Freddie was eventually seen by paramedics and airlifted to St George's Hospital, where he was treated by surgeon, Mr Jahrad Haq.

Speaking in the documentary himself, the surgeon claims it was one of the most complex cases he had ever seen, as the sporting legend had suffered extensive hard and soft tissue loss, including his teeth, lips, jaw and nose.

Flintoff's surgeon says his injuries were among the most extensive he'd seen (BBC)

"A lot of the injuries we have are managed at a more junior level before being escalated to consultants, so I knew something was up," Mr Haq says.

"His injuries, overall for the past 20 years of seeing maxillofacial trauma, I'd probably put in the top five.

"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 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."

Flintoff will be available to stream on Disney+ from tomorrow (25 April).