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"I wish I’d died": Cricket legend shares horror crash memories
SEN • April 24th, 2025 2:39 pm
England’s 2005 Ashes hero Andrew ‘Freddie’ Flintoff has made the heart-breaking revelation that part of him he wished he had been killed in a horror car accident in 2022.
While working on British car show Top Gear, the all-rounder was involved in a horrifying high speed crash which left him with severe facial injuries and broken ribs.
Speaking about the incident for the first time, Flintoff recounted the moment he was convinced he was dead and that to this day he is haunted by the memories he has.
“After the accident I didn’t think I had it in me to get through," he said in a Disney+ documentary set to come out this week.
"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. I was not wishing, I was just thinking, ‘this would have been so much easier’.”
Flintoff was not wearing a helmet when driving a Morgan Super 3 - a three-wheeled sports car - for the stunt which almost ended in tragedy.
The now 47-year-old thought his entire face had been torn off in the moments immediately after the incident which happened on a runway at Dunsfold Aerodrome in Surrey, England.
“I remember my head got hit, I got dragged out. I went over the back of the car and it pulled my face down on the runway, about 50 metres, underneath the car,” Flintoff said.
“My biggest fear was, I didn’t think I had a face. I thought my face had come off. I was frightened to death.
"I was conscious but I couldn't see anything.
“I’m still arranging it in my mind. Still coming to terms with it. I still live it every day.
"Still in the car every night when I go to bed. And it’s so vivid. I’ve not slept the same since. It’s a movie in my head.”
Flintoff was airlifted to a London hospital where he was treated by surgeon Jahrad Haq.
In the documentary, Haq describes Flintoff's injuries as "very complex" and in the top five worst of what he had seen in his career.
He had "lost a really significant portion of his upper lip - the skin and some of the underlying muscle - and also his lower lip," he said.
In the months and years after the accident, Flintoff withdrew from public life and only recently made a return to the cricket world – a move he describes as “the one thing that saved me”.
Flintoff is now the coach of the England Lions – a B-team made up of the nation’s next group of talent.
“If one thing’s come out of it which is positive it’s being back in cricket," Flintof told the Guardian.
“It’s probably the one thing that saved me.
“I’ve been welcomed back into that fold. It’s such a good place. I feel it’s safe. I have moments when I’m sat in a dressing room and I’m watching a game of cricket surrounded by cricketers and friends, and I’m able to forget.”
