Britain’s Got Talent judge and music mogul Simon Cowell reflected on the horror electric bicycle crash that left him with a broken back in 2020
Simon Cowell revealed his surgeon feared he would never walk again after the music mogul broke his back in three places following a crash. The Britain’s Got Talent judge suffered a near-death experience and broke his back when he was thrown off his electric bike while testing it out at his home in Malibu, California.
Afterwards, he was treated for a concussion and a broken arm as well as a broken back. The fall resulted in Cowell having a metal rod put into his spine, amid multiple procedures and operations. In a recent chat with Elizabeth Day on the How To Fail podcast, Simon opened up about the impact of the crash.
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He admitted he ‘could have died’ and his surgeon was concerned about whether they could ‘fix’ his back.
Simon revealed: “He showed me the X-ray and he said ‘Look, I’m not going to lie, Simon, I don’t know if I can fix this, which means you probably won’t walk and secondly, the operation could take 11 hours’.
“They said the obvious – it could go wrong – and all I could think about was my family and everything. In that moment you kind of realise the most important thing is your health and don’t do stupid things.”
The crash proved to be a ‘wake-up call’ about his life and he learned to stop taking huge risks in his life. “It was a wake-up moment, which is I’m crazy,” he continued.
“It kind of happened for a reason because I thought I was fit but then when I had to do all the physio after, just walking, they make you walk very quickly, I pretty much couldn’t move and then I started to walk a lot and thought ‘Oh God, I was in a really bad place’.”
Simon said he immediately realised he broke his back when he was thrown off the bike after it did a ‘wheelie’. He added: “I shipped it in from England, couldn’t wait to drive it.
“I was in the driveway and my son was there and I pulled the throttle, it did the biggest wheelie and it threw me like 7-8ft in the air. I landed on my back and the second I landed I thought ‘S**t, I know I’ve broken my back’ because I could feel it.” He was quick to check whether he could move his hands and feet, and when he realised he could, he thought ‘that’s not too bad’.
Simon previously talked about his hobby after his second bike crash. Speaking to ex Terri Seymour on ExtraTV, he said: “My most creative time is now when I cycle, because I cycle even though it’s an e-bike. I still got to pedal and I do about 10 miles a day, even though I had an accident on one.
“That was more an electric motorbike, these are called pedal-assist bikes and they’re brilliant. That expression ‘get back on your bike’, with me, it was literal. I feel better than I did because I exercise so much more.
“Honestly, if I could rewind, I would have gone through the whole thing again. Just because I feel better now. Yeah, even though it hurt like hell at the time.”
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