Few names spring to mind more when the Winter Olympics are mentioned as Eddie the Eagle. However, before achieving fame at the 1988 Games, Michael Edwards was a penniless “charity case” who scavenged food from bins and slept in his car.
As Team GB‘s inaugural ski jumper, support was scarce. Edwards, now 62, scraped together enough funds to reach Calgary, where he famously finished last in both the 70m and 90m competitions. Unable to afford daily training fees at Lake Placid, New York, he shovelled snow to train for free. Without equipment, he sourced items from lost property. Short of money for food, he befriended a hotel chef and mowed his lawn in exchange for complimentary meals.
“I was scraping food out of bins,” Edwards revealed on BBC’s Sport’s Greatest Underdogs podcast. “The more I could ski jump, the better I could get and, even if I had $100 left, I wanted to make that $100 last.”
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