“I Was Close to Dying” West Ham star Michail Antonio share how he felt after horrific Car crash
West Ham star, Michail Antonio says he still doesn’t know how he crashed his car into a tree. All he knows is that it happened.
“The police came and found me between the two seats. I wasn’t even in the driver’s seat,” Antonio said. “They told me it looked like I was trying to climb out of the window, but my leg was so badly broken the pain must have stopped me.”
Pictures of his smashed Ferrari, which hit a tree in Epping Forest on a stormy Saturday in December, quickly spread on social media. Many people wondered if he was still alive.
The accident left the West Ham striker with a broken leg. He spent over three weeks in hospital and now faces a long road to recovery.
But Antonio, who is West Ham’s all-time top scorer in the Premier League, is determined to return. The 34-year-old says he feels lucky to be alive and believes he has been given “another chance at life” after coming “close to dying.”
In an exclusive interview with BBC One’s Morning Live, Antonio spoke to Helen Skelton about his “horrendous accident” and the day that changed everything.
What Happened ?
Saturday, 7 December started as a normal day. Antonio trained with West Ham in preparation for a league match against Wolves. But the weather was terrible. “It was windy, wet and horrific,” he recalled. There were weather warnings for Storm Darragh.
Antonio explained that he had felt “lazy” when his partner asked him to get some bags from their other car. Instead of swapping vehicles, he decided to take his Ferrari. He had doubts about it.
“The back of the car kept swinging out on me. I didn’t feel safe,” he said. “I’d only had it for three weeks and was already thinking about giving it back.”
On his way home, he crashed. But Antonio remembers nothing about the moment it happened. “It’s weird because I was told I was awake the whole time and was talking to everyone – the police, the people who found me,” he said.
His leg was completely shattered. “They got me out and put a splint on my leg at the side of the car,” he added. People thought he was airlifted to hospital, but the storm was so bad the helicopter couldn’t fly. He was driven there instead.
Three weeks ago, Antonio visited the scrapyard to see what was left of his car.
“It gave me a strange feeling in my stomach,” he said. “It made me realise how close I was to dying. I had seen the pictures, but in person, it was ten times worse. The car was a complete mess. It was hard to see.”
Antonio is now focused on his recovery and hopeful he can return to football at the highest level.
