FREDDIE Flintoff has revealed he still feels phantom pain – three years on from his horror Top Gear crash and hasn’t slept the same since.
The former cricketer suffered severe facial injuries as a result of the smash, which occurred in 2022 at Dunsfold Aerodrome in Surrey.
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Freddie, 47, had been filming for Top Gear when his three-wheeled roadster flipped over, with his former co-star Chris Harris also on location when it happened.
He spent eight months recovering from the ordeal – and never left the house during that time, apart for medical appointments.
In of his special Disney+ documentary – which drops on Friday – Freddie reveals how he still feels phantom pain and has frequent flashbacks and nightmares of the crash that plays over and over in his mind nightly, like a movie he can’t turn off.
Freddie said: “I still live it every day. I see the car every night when I go to bed. It’s so vivid. I’ve not slept the same since.
“Even the memories of it are real, to the point where now I’m talking about it and I’m getting a bit jittery.
“I can feel the pain on this side of my face, I can feel phantom pains. It’s like a bit of a curse really.
“I’ve got PTSD and I get anxious. For periods of time I just find myself crying for no particular reason.”
Before his crash, Freddie presented Top Gear alongside Chris Harris and Paddy McGuinness from 2019 until 2022.
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Freddie also recounted the exact moment the crash occurred in chilling detail.
He explained: “We were probably doing about 40 or 45. They were showing me how to get the car going sideways, and a wheel came off at the front.
“It’s a funny thing rolling a car because there’s the point of no return and everything slows down. It’s so weird.
“I think it was half an hour, 40 minutes just in agony until the air ambulance came. It was just: ‘This can’t be happening to me, it can’t be happening.’
“I remember everything about it. In some ways it would have been easier if I’d gone unconscious, and then been unconscious for a week or two and you wake up and all your stitches are out and everything.
“I think about it now, back in that car. It was a three wheeler with a reinforced windscreen, and a bar which was about half way up my back, so I’m exposed.”
The Sun revealed in 2023 how the motoring show had been axed by the BBC following the accident.
We also told how the open-topped Morgan Super 3 sports car Freddie was driving was not fitted with air bags.
A internal investigation into the channel’s health and safety practices was launched.
Freddie’s Disney+ film – produced by South Shore – will also look back at his incredible life and cricketing career that saw him win two Ashes series with England and become a national sporting hero.
Award-winning director John Dower was granted exclusive access to Freddie over the last year to film his recovery and document his cricketing career.
Flintoff will premiere on April 25 in the UK and Ireland.
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