Richard Hammond’s Crash Is Forcing Him To Use A Bicycle
Richard Hammond is thankfully recovering well after his horrific crash over the summer in a Rimac Concept_One, but his inability to exercise is apparently causing a couple issues.
Hammond is known to exercise a little more than Clarkson or May (read: regularly), but doctors quickly banned him from jogging for 18 months while he recovers from the accident. On the red carpet the other night at the GQ Awards, Hammond said: “I can’t run for 18 months and that’s how I keep fit. I’m 47 – it’s hard to keep the weight off so it will hit me hard if I can’t run. They’ve told me I have to cycle – but I hate cyclists. We all hate cyclists.”
A quick refresher on the crash: Hammond was doing a hill climb as part of a Grand Tour segment in Switzerland in which the presenters compared the Rimac Concept_One (driven by Hammond) to the Lamborghini Aventador S and Honda NSX (driven by Clarkson and May respectively). During one of the final runs, he took a corner too quickly and was catapulted over the edge of the extremely narrow hill road, plummeting several stories before the car was engulfed in flames. Paramedics pulled Hammond from the wreckage and he was promptly airlifted to a nearby hospital, where he was treated for major injuries to his knee but was otherwise mostly unhurt.
Luckily, filming for The Grand Tour’s second season was actually ahead of schedule for once, with Hammond adding that “It didn’t impact at all. We were ahead for my crash too so it actually evened it out.”
Hammond’s experiences cycling on Top Gear haven’t all been positive, but maybe he’ll be a little more open-minded once he’s doing it for his health.