“Eddie the Eagle”, aka Michael David Edwards he is the Englishman who defied gravity, short-sightedness and common sense to realize his five-circle dream. Without money, with makeshift equipment and a less than athletic physique, Eddie managed to qualify for the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics in ski jumping, becoming the first Briton in history to compete in this discipline. He didn’t win anything, on the contrary, he collected negative records and several broken bones, but his courage, in addition to inspiring documentaries and films, enchanted the whole world, transforming him forever into a symbol.
Who is “Eddie the Eagle”: the beginning
Michael David Edwards was born on 5 December 1963 in Cheltenham, a city west of London in England, and grew up with a fixed idea, the one that millions of children have all over the world: to participate in the Olympic Games. As a child he played various sports, but never really stood out. He suffers from severe myopia and coordination problems, elements that make the sporting path of young Eddie complicated, who despite this continues to pursue the Olympic goal, a goal that as the years pass will become more of a personal mission than a real competitive ambition.
During a school trip he discovers alpine skiing and falls in love with it, so he decides that it will be the discipline that will take him to the Games one day. However, there are several obstacles between Eddie and the 5-circle dream: first of all, the United Kingdom does not have large facilities dedicated to skiing and does not have a plan to promote and support the discipline, so to train at a high level it is necessary to move abroad. Furthermore, the level of compatriots with whom they compete for the few places available in the national team is very high, not to mention the international athletes who come from countries with a great skiing tradition such as Austria, Switzerland or Italy.
The stroke of genius: ski jumping
At this point, when the Olympic dream is starting to fade, Eddie understands a fundamental dynamic of Olympic sport: not all disciplines have the same level of competition, especially in countries without tradition. Ski jumping in the UK is virtually non-existent. This means one thing: becoming the only British representative of the discipline at the Olympics is difficult, but not impossible.
Eddie then starts practicing ski jumping (a very dangerous discipline in which the best athletes jump over 100 meters into the void) without a technical background. He moved to Germany, to Garmisch-Partenkirchen, a famous ski resort as well as one of the historic centers where the discipline is practiced. Here he trains with makeshift equipment: used equipment, boots that are too big, non-aerodynamic suits. He tries to self-finance with small jobs as a painter or bricklayer, he sleeps in a caravan because he can’t afford a hotel.
From a technical point of view, Eddie is clearly inferior to his training partners. He has difficulty in the take-off phase, in flight control and especially in landing, without considering his strong myopia which forces him to constantly wear eyeglasses, which fog up with every jump. He falls often and is injured several times, but continues to train and develops a rudimentary but effective style just enough to complete the jumps and obtain his first valid scores in smaller competitions, necessary for Olympic qualification. Over the course of his career, he fractured his skull twice and broke his jaw, collarbone, ribs, knee, fingers, thumbs, feet, back and neck.
In 1988, less than two years after starting to practice the discipline, he succeeded: he qualified for the Winter Olympics in Calgary, Canada, as the first British ski jumper in the history of the Games. He shows up with new skis given to him by the Austrian national team, a new helmet offered by the Italian athletes, his thick glasses fixed with an elastic band and a smile that betrays more enthusiasm than competitive tension. As scheduled, Eddie competes first on the K-90 trampoline and then on the K-120. In both competitions he finished in last place, with about half the points of the penultimate place, but he rejoiced with every jump as if he had won gold. The spectators understand that they are not watching a potential champion, but an extraordinary human story, and they accompany his every jump with an ovation.
The international media immediately turns Eddie into a global phenomenon. He becomes “Eddie the Eagle”, a nickname that ironically underlines the distance between his name and his performances. We will talk more about him than about other athletes who will dominate those Games, such as our Alberto Tomba, with his two gold medals in Giant Slalom and Slalom.
The president of the International Olympic Committee, in the closing speech of the Olympics, will explicitly mention it, saying that “Some athletes won gold, some broke records, but some flew like an eagle.” Eddie himself will say that he probably looked more like an ostrich than an eagle. He took part in television programmes, was interviewed by newspapers all over the world and became one of the most recognizable faces of those Olympics, despite not winning anything.
The “Eddie the Eagle Rule” to avoid new similar cases
Eddie’s Olympic participation and the resulting media hype opened a profound debate within the Olympic movement. After the Calgary Games, the International Olympic Committee and international federations introduced stricter qualification criteria. It was no longer enough to be the best athlete in your country in a specific discipline: you needed to demonstrate a minimum level of international competitiveness.
These rules were informally called “Eddie the Eagle Rules”. They were not actually thought of as a personal punishment towards Eddie Edwards, but as a systemic response to an Olympics that was becoming increasingly professional and less and less suitable for outsiders or improvised athletes. Eddie thus became a turning point in the history of the modern Games, but he still tried to participate in the next three Winter Olympics, without managing to qualify.
After retiring from racing, Eddie Edwards was able to capitalize on his popularity by becoming a motivator and public figure. His story is told in several documentaries and in the 2016 film “Eddie the Eagle – the courage of madness”, which still contributes to fixing his myth in the collective imagination and to telling this incredible sports story to those who did not experience it in 1988, despite Eddie himself saying that the film is only 5% truthful.
