Eddie the Eagle sparked Winter Olympics rule change but wants to ski on 100th birthday

Eddie ‘The Eagle’ Edwards made history at the 1988 Winter Olympics in more ways than one after soaring into the hearts of a nation.

The 62-year-old became the first athlete to represent Great Britain in ski jumping at the Games despite only taking it up 22 months earlier.

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Having missed out on being part of Team GB‘s Alpine skiing team at the 1984 Olympics in Sarajevo, Edwards pivoted to a new discipline.

The former plasterer from Cheltenham practised on the dry slope at Gloucester Ski Centre to compensate for the lack of UK ski jumps.

During preparation for the Calgary Olympics, Edwards ate food out of bins and slept in both a cow shed and a psychiatric hospital in Finland.

The son of a builder romed the world and took numerous casual jobs while using lost property equipment to offset his lack of funding.

“I was just doing what I needed to do,” explained Edwards on the ‘Three Rivers’ Podcast.  

“All I knew was that I loved my skiing and I loved my ski jumping, and I was prepared to do anything so long as I could carry on skiing and ski jumping.

“And if that meant sleeping in a car, or in a cow shed or in a barn. If that meant scraping food out of bins, if that meant sleeping in a psychiatric hospital, then so be it.

“I was just doing what I needed to do.”

At 22, Edwards had adopted a sport the world’s best had been training in since children and as a result bore the scars to match.

‘The Eagle’ sustained two skull fractures, a broken jaw, three broken ribs and shattered his collarbone, among knee and kidney injuries.

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Why did Eddie the Eagle wear glasses?

Edwards struggled with severe farsightedness, which meant he wore his trademark glasses underneath his ski goggles.

However, the altitude meant his spectacles would often steam up mid-air and restrict his vision.

He also donned six pairs of socks to ensure his second-hand boots fit, and was loaned a helmet by the Italian team.

Edwards finished last at the 1987 World Championships, but met the then-Olympic standard by jumping almost 70 meters.

At the Winter Games the following year, he again finished last in the 70m event, having only jumped 55m on both of his attempts.

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Winter Olympics rule change

Norwegian Torjborn Yggeseth, director of the 90m event, asked British officials to withdraw Edwards due to strong winds in Calgary.

“Under Olympic rules, we did not have the power to ban him from making the first of his two jumps,” said Yggeseth to the Guardian.

“But yes, we did go to the British delegation and asked them to withdraw him. Evidently, they decided he could manage.”

Eddie the Eagle, 19 metres behind his nearest competitor, came last in the 90m event as well, but set a new British record of 71 metres.

He’d become a national hero, but the International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS) intervened to end his Olympic career.

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“The FIS made a regulation the Americans call the “Eddie the Eagle Rule” so I couldn’t compete in the next Olympics,” he said in 2009.

“I was kicked off the British team because they thought I made a mockery of the sport.

“I wanted to get better and show people that I was a decent, middle-of-the-pack jumper, but they never let me back in. Instead, I had to become Eddie the Eagle for a few years and live off that.”

In December, Edwards starred in the pantomime version of Beauty and the Beast, but revealed he still regularly takes to the slopes.

He told the Three Rivers Podcast last month: “Eventually, I want to go back and do a refresher course for my instructor license and become a ski instructor again and carry on skiing.

“One of my biggest aims now is I want to be skiing down a black run on my one hundredth birthday!”