It’s been nearly five full years since America’s Got Talent judge Simon Cowell first saw his health seriously threatened. It was in August 2020 that the, apparently, not-that-rude-in-real-life former American Idol judge had an accident while attempting to ride his new e-bike in his driveway and broke his back. The entrepreneur had to have spinal fusions, a metal rod inserted into his back and also endured a long road to recovery that included missing AGT tapings for nearly a year, but eventually came out OK on the other side. Now, he’s opened up about having the first heart-to-heart with his surgeon after that accident and realizing he might not have been able to walk again.
What Did Simon Cowell Say About First Realizing How Bad His E-Bike Accident Was?
The 2025 TV schedule is set to bring us America’s Got Talent Season 20 (which had to reschedule auditions because of the Los Angeles wildfires) in just a little while now, but there was a time not that long ago when Simon Cowell’s part as a Grinch-like judge on the long-running hit was not a given. This, of course, was after he broke his back in his first e-bike accident and needed nearly a year to recover (he had a second e-bike accident that led to a broken arm in 2022).
While speaking on How to Fail with Elizabeth Day, the fielder of weird (and sometimes sexual in nature) fan requests talked about the accident and its aftermath, and said:
We had to do the X-rays, and [my surgeon] showed me the X-ray, and I’m like, ‘God.’ He said, ‘Look, I’m not gonna lie, Simon. Number one, I don’t know if I can fix this, which means you probably won’t walk. And secondly, the operation’s going to take maybe 11 hours. So, stating the obvious, it could go wrong.’ And at that moment I’m like, ‘Oh, gosh.’
It was roughly six weeks after the accident that fans began to wonder if Cowell’s injury was a lot more serious than we’d thought, because the star had basically disappeared from social media and was said to be facing a lot of long-term ramifications even though his surgery went well and reportedly only took five hours to complete.
From how he tells it, just looking at the X-rays post-injury told him how bad it was, but hearing that the surgeon wasn’t even sure he could fix his back, along with noting the potential length of the procedure and the possibility of something else going wrong during it, really made the damage done hit home in a very real way.
And, that realization was with The X Factor judge admitting that after the bike “threw me seven or eight feet in the air” after he pulled the throttle and the device popped a massive “wheelie,” he landed and knew “I’ve broken my back.” Cowell had assumed that since he could still move his fingers and toes, that the injury couldn’t have been too bad. However, he continued:
All I kept thinking about was, you know, my family and everything. In that moment you kind of realize the most important thing is your health and don’t do stupid things [Laughs].
Cowell’s son, Eric (who is now 11 and “went crazy” when he saw his dad on an e-bike soon after his 2022 accident), was only around five or six at the time, and he was actually in the driveway with him and watching when the accident happened, so it especially makes a lot of sense that he would think of his son and what kind of future he’d be able to have with him after finding out just how badly he was hurt.
Luckily, everything turned out alright, and Cowell confirmed again that he feels better than before the accident because he’s ‘fitter’ after having to do physical therapy and taking stock of how much he sat to work before that fateful day in his driveway.
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