Top Gear's Hammond serious

Published: 8:26AM Thursday September 21, 2006 Source: Reuters

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Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond was seriously ill in hospital on Thursday after being badly injured after a high-speed crash in a jet-powered car while filming for the programme.
   
The 36-year-old presenter was taken by air ambulance to a hospital in Leeds which has a special neurological unit after the accident on Wednesday.
   
"There's been some improvement overnight but Richard remains in a serious but stable condition," a hospital spokesman said.
   
No further information was being issued at this stage at the request of Hammond's family, he added.
   
The presenter had been filming at a former Royal Air Force base in an attempt to break the British Land Speed Record when the accident happened, according to media reports.
   
The presenter had been driving a jet-powered car capable of reaching 300 miles per hour (480 kilometres per hour) before the accident in northern England.
   
Hammond had to be cut from the wreckage of the vehicle which had veered off the track and rolled over, the BBC quoted one of the rescuers as saying.
   
"We were down there with Top Gear who were filming him trying to break the British land speed record," Dave Ogden, one of those involved in the rescue, told the BBC.
   
"On the previous run, the car had just gone over 300 mph but I am not sure if it had broken the record.
   
"They had just done one more run and were planning to finish when it veered off to the right."
   
Hammond had been able to talk to but was in distress, he added.
   
"He was regaining consciousness at that point and said he had some lower back pain. But he was drifting in and out of consciousness a little bit," Ogden said.
   
The Top Gear show, which tests and reviews cars, enjoys cult status and is broadcast to millions of people worldwide on BBC World.
   
Hammond, a father of two is affectionately known as "The Hamster" by his legion of fans and is the butt of good-natured ribbing about his diminutive height by the show's co-presenters Jeremy Clarkson and James May.
   
"He is a wonderful, unique and distinctive Top Gear presenter," Quentin Wilson, one of the show's former hosts told the BBC.
   
"He has brought an awful lot to the programme and his indefatigable energy, the fact that he tries absolutely anything once, may have been the reason that he has overstepped the mark a bit."   

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