Freddie Flintoff reveals horror photos from Top Gear crash for the first time
WARNING: Graphic
The full extent of the injuries Andrew 'Freddie' Flintoff suffered in his Top Gear crash are laid bare for the first time in his new Disney+ documentary.
The show, which dropped on Saturday, includes graphic images of the lacerations he suffered to his nose, cheek, lips and chin when he was dragged, face down, for around 50 metres along the tarmac of Dunsfold Aerodrome in 2022.
Photos apparently taken after he was removed from the Surrey track by air ambulance to St George's Hospital are likely to shock viewers, The Sun reports.
They reveal for the first time the physical impact of the crash which happened when the three-wheeled Morgan supercar overturned and trapped Freddie, 47, underneath the vehicle.
As well as the large cut, which required surgeons to carry out a skin graft, his front teeth were smashed to pieces by the impact and had to be replaced.
Since the accident he has had to have multiple operations and have his face 'soldered' together with plasma as well as painful steroid injections straight into his scars.
Talking in the documentary he says: '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?'
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?'
Freddie revealed how he had the choice to turn his head away from the tarmac as the car overturned to prevent him from breaking his neck, but that meant his only other option was to go 'face down' as the vehicle continued to slide across the track.
Flintoff, a key member of England's 2005 Ashes-winning side against Australia, admitted he feared he had been damaged beyond repair by the crash.
'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,' he said.
'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 driving a Morgan Super 3 three-wheeled sports car when it overturned.
The open-topped car is capable of hitting 209 km/h and the cricketer wasn't wearing a helmet when it flipped over.
Flintoff's surgeon Jahrad Haq describes the former England captain's injuries as among the five worst he has come across in 20 years and likened the reconstruction process to a jigsaw with missing pieces.
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