Eddie the Eagle’s unlikely flight to the Winter Olympics

SALISBURY — Dale Jones smiled when asked about his memories of Michael “Eddie” Edwards, the intrepid British ski jumper who twice survived Satre Hill. 

“He’s one of those guys whose story reminds you of the Jamaican bobsled team,” said Jones, the PA announcer at the Salisbury Winter Sports Association’s annual Jumpfest weekend since 1987. “He wasn’t the most athletically gifted, but he had a ton of heart.” 

So much heart, in fact, that Edwards qualified for the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary just 20 months after his first lunge — or was it a “plunge?” — off a ski jump. He was back in Salisbury on Wednesday, Feb. 24, to promote the new film about his life, “Eddie the Eagle,” which opened nationwide on Friday, Feb. 26. 

It is a heartwarming story about self-belief, persistence and the true meaning of athletic success. Or, as the film’s director, Dexter Fletcher, said: “It’s about getting up and going for it.” 

Humble beginnings 

For as long as he can remember, Edwards harbored dreams of competing in the Olympics. It was mostly a fantasy when he was little, a vision plucked from a fairytale, but his talent as a downhill skier soon brought it within reach. 

In 1984, while racing for the British national team, Edwards narrowly missed out on making the Alpine squad for that year’s Olympics. Disappointed, but undeterred, he came to the United States shortly after that to continue his training in Lake Placid, N.Y. 

But Alpine skiing was an expensive sport, and Edwards, whose parents kept working-class jobs back home, quickly ran out of money. That’s when he eyed the ski jumps for which Lake Placid is famous. 

“I realized Great Britain had never had an Olympic ski jumper and I thought to myself, ‘I wonder if I can do this,’” he recalled. 

Ski jumping was more affordable, which allowed Edwards to remain in Lake Placid to train, and the lack of competition among his countrymen made for a clear path to the Olympics. Theoretically the decision made sense, until considering this one little fact: Edwards had no clue what he was doing. 

Climbing the 10-meter jump for the first time, he was going in blind — to say nothing of having critically poor eyesight. He had no experience to draw upon, no formal instruction to follow, and though he laughs about it now, amused still at his own naivete, there was nothing funny about his first foray into ski jumping.    

“It was scary,” he said, with a smile that suggested otherwise. “I was really bricking it.” 

When he sidled out to the top of the inrun and cleared the lenses on his iron-rim glasses, Edwards was gazing upon likely debilitation. But he sent himself down the ramp, leapt into the air and, as luck would have it, landed upright and intact. 

Emboldened by his good fortune, he took on the 15-meter jump an hour later, then the 40-meter and then the 60-meter, scampering up the sport’s ladder with daredevil haste. In a mere five months, Edwards was jumping from the 120-meter tower, the granddaddy of them all.  

“Half the time I was just trying to survive,” he recalls. “It wasn’t falling over after the jump that scared me. It was landing on my head.”

Making his way 

Edwards’ concerns went beyond his clumsiness as a jumper. Because the British Olympic Association offered him scant support, not interested in endorsing such an unpolished competitor, Edwards was forced to fund his own training. He sought out tips and lessons from anyone willing to give them and scrounged up his own equipment, often wearing six pairs of socks to fit into his hand-me-down boots.   

On top of that, Edwards hardly had any money for lodging and food. Trekking across Europe from mountain to mountain in his parents’ car, he often slept in barns and cowsheds and scraped food out of trash bins. His gregarious personality earned him a host of allies on the tour, and the jumpers often brought him bananas, apples and ham-and-cheese sandwiches from their nearby hotels.

“Half the time, I didn’t know where my next meal was coming from — but it was good for me to lose the weight!” joked Edwards. 

His sanguine outlook wasn’t a pretense. To Edwards, nothing was more important than reaching the Olympics. As long as that goal lay shimmering before him, life’s other necessities were luxuries that could wait.   

“I wasn’t really concerned with feeding myself or finding somewhere to stay,” Edwards said, a twinkle in his eye as though he was recalling a quaint island getaway. “If I could just stay on the tour and do another week of jumping, that’s what mattered to me most.” 

As solidly as Edwards believed in himself, most onlookers laughed at his foolhardy endeavor. They dismissed his chances of qualifying for the games in Calgary and held up ski jumping as a sport beyond his capabilities. But Edwards never caved beneath the critics. 

“He doesn’t let people deter him or dissuade him from what he wants to do,” Fletcher explained, in a recent phone interview with The Lakeville Journal. “He doesn’t just roll over and let the naysayers in. He says, ‘Screw that, I’ll show you. I’ll show you I can.’” 

The crowd-pleaser

During his journey to Calgary, Edwards became known less for his jumping exploits and more for his colorful persona. In a sternly competitive setting, he maintained a buoyant disposition no matter the results — and often, they were ugly. 

He almost always finished last in world competitions, rarely by a close margin. Yet after each jump, while his peers unstrapped their skis and quietly boarded the lift back to the top, Edwards thrust his arms in the air and shimmied in the outrun like he had broken a world record.  

Part of this excitement stemmed from the mere feat of survival. Edwards’ inexperience put him at particular risk on the 90- and 120-meter jumps, so coming down in one piece wasn’t something he took for granted.   

“For me, I was just happy to have landed on my feet. That alone was worth celebrating,” he explained.  

But it was also Edwards’ way of entertaining the crowd. Unable to thrill the fans with his ability, he brought smiles to their faces through his silly antics and irresistible charm. In Oberstdorf, a frequent stop on the tour, Edwards developed a routine with the fans that he laughs about to this day. 

“I would go to the bottom of the outrun as if I was going to fall over, then hit the spectator barrier at the last second and wrap my arms around some old lady. Then the old man next to her would offer me a sip of his pint, so I would drink it down and then pose for photos. The people loved it!”

Though the fans were enamored of Edwards, most of the media was not. They felt he was making a mockery of the sport, and stealing the spotlight from more deserving jumpers. Rather than embracing his behavior for its joy and authenticity, they frowned on it for its impudence — as if enjoying oneself was such a crime.      

“I can see why the media might have thought of me as a joke,” Edwards explained, “but what they didn’t realize was that I was just being me. That didn’t mean I wasn’t taking ski jumping seriously, it just meant that I loved the sport and I loved doing it.” 

Fletcher was quick to point out the same thing, explaining, “People assumed he was a joker and a chancer and making fun of it all, but he was actually deadly serious.” 

Regardless, Edwards never paid such comments any mind. And aside from a few bitter jumpers who saw their popularity wane in the face of Edwards’ arrival, the majority of his peers appreciated his presence on the tour. 

“Ninety percent of the other jumpers thought I was brilliant for entertaining the crowds. They realized all the attention being thrust on me was being thrust on the sport as a whole,” he said. 

His antics notwithstanding, Edwards was jumping with the same competitive intentions as those around him, a fact that seemed to get lost beneath all the moralizing in the media. 

“It’s a shame that the press sometimes took more notice of the fact that I was always laughing, joking and having fun, and less notice that I was still an athlete trying to do the best I could with what I had, which wasn’t much.”

Ties to Salisbury

Over the course of his ski jumping travels, Edwards twice made stops in Salisbury, first in 1987 and again in 1997. Satre Hill has hosted a multitude of world-class jumpers in the past, skiers who went on to win gold medals and set world records, but none whose memory endures like Edwards’ has.

In 1987, while taking part in the U.S. Eastern Ski Jumping Championships, Edwards drew some of the loudest cheers despite finishing with one of the lowest scores. After one particularly average jump, as announcer Jones remembered, Edwards cruised into the outrun with his arms stretched to the sky — a “victory V,” Jones smiled. “The fans loved it,” 

Edwards, for his part, had a foggy memory of his first time jumping in Salisbury, but flashed a big smile when reminded of that celebration. 

“Ohhh yes, I remember that now,” he said, laughing at the memory. “I tried all sorts of things.”   

His experience at Satre Hill in 1997 is one he recalled more clearly, in part because of the weather, in part because of the creaking wooden jump from which he took flight.   

“It was just bitterly cold that weekend, and I remember thinking, ‘This might be one of the last jumps they have here because this rickety old thing is falling to bits!’” he confessed. “But it’s lovely to see the new jump they’ve built, as well as that beautiful judging tower.” 

Over a ski jumping career that lasted through 1997, Edwards jumped in more towns and cities than he can name, on more hills and mountains than he can remember. Neither Salisbury nor Satre Hill seemed to stand out in his mind over any others, but he appreciated the simple beauty of both.   

“It’s a lovely town, and a great little ski jumping club,” he said, referring to the Salisbury Winter Sports Association. “I remember quite good crowds here, and they support ski jumping in a good way. Long may it continue.”

Then he paused, reflecting on the town’s 90th anniversary hosting the U.S. Eastern Ski Jumping Championships. 

“Maybe I’ll be jumping here in another 90 years!” he exclaimed, and laughed heartily at the suggestion. If anyone could pull it off, of course, it’d be Eddie the Eagle. 

Reaching the Summit

 Edwards eventually qualified for the Olympics through the 1987 World Championships in Oberstdorf, by virtue of being the only British participant in the competition. Critics denounced his merit, per usual, but by then Edwards had already succeeded. 

“He wasn’t deluded about going to Calgary and causing some stunning upset and winning a medal,” said Fletcher. “He just wanted to get there and be a part of it, and he won, in his mind, by doing that.”  

So he continued to dance when others would have sulked, continued to laugh when others would have scowled and continued to jump when others would have remained on the ground.  

In so doing, Edwards exemplified the spirit of the Olympics, a competition that was built on the enthusiasm of amateurs. As Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the International Olympic Committee, once said, “The important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win, but to take part.” 

In Calgary, Edwards’ popularity transcended his crowd-pleasing antics. More than anything else, the fans latched onto him for his relatability. Edwards wasn’t blessed with any kind of superhuman talent, but there he was, doing superhuman things.

He was perhaps the most ordinary person to compete in the 1988 Winter Olympics — which, when you think about it, made him all the more extraordinary.