The worst jumper
of all times?
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Eddie during one
his "flights"
Eddie's book "On The piste
with Eddie Edwards"
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One of the
most known, if also not the best ski jumpers, Michael „Eddie The
Eagle" Edwards:
When the
23-year-old Michael Edwards from Cheltenham
began for the first time as an English participant at the four hills tournament
in Oberstdorf on December 30th, 1986, he gazed
admiration as ski jumping exotic. The Norwegian Vegaard Opas won with a best jump of 94 metre at that time
and of the all in all 112 participants Edwards got last with 65 m. He
made his first ski jumping experiences in 1985, as he lived
and worked at Lake Placid for a short time. He
tried his first jumps there and he jumped in summer 1986 for the first time on
the plastic covered hills in the Swiss Kandersteg.
At the
World Championships in February 1987 Matti Nykänen mastered the competition clearly, Eddie jumped with
73 m of a new British record, deleted the 56 years old record of Guy Nixon with
that and despite his last place was nominated for the Olympic Games 1988
by the British ski association, he never got financial support of, though.
The Englishman who is shortsighted and jumping with
strong seeing glasses became only last one of the field also in Calgary with 55 metres. With
this image he became "Eddie The Eagle" and
more drew the attention with on itself than on the sporting winners.
With the
courage of a beginner his tense, stiff jumps were extremely partly dangerous
and he brought down in Innsbruck
and broke his collarbone in 1989. He played the role of the entertaining
eccentric perfectly, whom the media and the fans saw in it, and it also paid
off for him. He took part at speed Skiing and
made risky ski jumping stunts over busses. His person was in demand in TV
shows, in commercials and his banal music songs sold well. He shall alone have
earned £ 400,000 by TV appearances in 1988. But the learnt road worker could
not handle the lots of money, it frittered away and 1992 he was finally
bankrupt.
He
sportingly was pushed by the FIS by the established qualification system. After
eleven world cup and six European cup appearances he jumped in St. Aegyd (Austria)
the last time in 1992. The winner reached 72 metres, Eddie jumped 46 metres and
got last like so often. Later, he still brought out a book of his own named
"On The piste" and 2002 sold the TV rights
of his own story to an American production company.
His
appearance is controversial to this day: The one respect his sporting courage
and describe it as a rebirth of the English ski jumping, others considered it
an alone sub-holder. However, one is uncontentious:
It is the first and only Englishman who has taken part at Olympic Winter Games
in ski jumping.
Source: Partial statement from "The
History of ski Jumping" of Tim Ashburner
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