In 1988, Michael David Edwards, a plasterer from Cheltonham, went to Calgary to compete in the Winter Olympics. When he came home, he was Eddie the Eagle. And not because he was carrying a suitcase full of medals. In fact, he finished dead last in the two sky jumping events he competed in. In the men’s Normal Hill, Edwards scored 69.2 points from two jumps of 55m. The second-last finisher, Bernat Sola-Pujol of Spain, scored 140.4 points from 71m and 68.5m jumps, respectively (Olympics.com).

Eddie was the first Englishman to compete in Olympic ski jumping. He held the British ski jumping record until 2001. With his coke-bottle lens glasses, his underbite and his big smile, he came home a hero. He was the lovable loser, much like the Jamaican bobsled team that competed in the same Olympics, far more memorable than most of the gold medal winners.

The aftermath: “Johnny Carson invited him to sit on the couch. He had his picture taken with showgirls. He marketed his own line of T- shirts. He made appearances to open malls, ski shops, amusement rides and parking garages, jumping off scaffolding and out of airplanes, landing on a nest egg that, by his account, was cushioned to the sum of $750,000 before it cracked. He has also launched himself from a man-made ramp in the financial canyons of New York City, raced monster trucks, parachuted onto a golf course to greet Arnold Palmer and even recorded a song about himself in Finland that reached No. 2 on the charts.” (Jere Longman, New York Times, Feb 8, 1996)

He told Martin Kelner of the Guardian (Feb, 26, 2013) about another benefit of his new-found fame: “’I was getting all this attention from all these women. I used to go off and do things in nightclubs, present things,’ explained Eddie. ‘Obviously these women are throwing themselves at you but it was only because you were popular and it was great fun. Sometimes I took advantage but most of the time I didn’t.’ A passport, then, to fame, fortune and the finest bedrooms in the west of England.”

But not everyone was enamored with the way the Eagle soared in Calgary. Dave Anderson on the New York Times News Service (Jan. 31, 1992) wrote: “But for all the fun, Eddie the Eagle didn’t deserve to take part. He sneaked in through a back door that was ajar. Now the British Olympic Association has slammed that door, tightening its qualifying standards.

“As it should. His wings clipped, Eddie the Eagle has been grounded. He’s not on the British team that will be marching at Saturday’s opening ceremony for the XVI Winter Olympics at Albertville in the French Alps. If it’s British stuffiness that grounded him, it’s also Olympic common sense. Protect competitors from themselves.

“Especially a ski jumper, a Winter bird of prey high above hard-packed snow. To the British Olympic Association, Eddie the Eagle was an endangered species. And the species was himself.”

Eddie had some personal setbacks as well. In 1989, he fractured his skull and broke two ribs after a bad landing in Innsbruck, Austria. “By 1992 things had taken a sour turn, as Edwards entered involuntary bankruptcy, unable to pay a tax bill due to his trust fund being managed poorly; Edwards would subsequently settle out of court against his trustees and get some of his money back.” (Steven Pye, Guardian Sport Network, Feb 4, 2014)

In 2009 he told James Daley of Ski Magazine “I’ve changed a lot since Calgary, and I’m surprised when people recognize me on the street. I had surgery on my jaw and eyes. I had a whale of a time being a celebrity, but now it’s calmed down and I can lead a normal life. I own a plastering business and do speeches as Eddie the Eagle almost every week. It’s actually a nice dual personality.”

Five years later (Jan. 18, 2014), Ken Belson of the New York Times described Eddie’s life 25 years after his Olympic jumps. “Edwards appears to have changed little in the quarter-century since Calgary. He has less hair and no longer wears thick glasses after Lasik surgery. He keeps trim by training for reality shows and working as a plasterer as his father and grandfather did. He is fixing a two-century-old home that he bought. 

“While his fame pays his way to places as far as Australia, Edwards remains a creature of the Cotswolds, where he lives with his wife, Samantha, two young daughters and two Shetland ponies. His modest two-story home is filled with all the signs of a busy family with children.”

“Eddie met his wife Samantha Morton while working as a part-time radio presenter.

“They married in Las Vegas in 2003 and had two daughters together, Otillie and Honey May.

“However, in 2014 Sam dropped a bombshell when he returned home from a TV interview in Germany, saying she wanted to leave him.” (Danny Collins and  Caroline Peacock, The Sun, Jan. 22, 2024)

Eddie has continued to show up just about anywhere. A year ago he was in Warwick doing a Q&A session at a retirement village. Last December he was booked to hobnob with guests at the French ski resort Les Gets. In March, he was the guest star on an Ambassador Cruise Line trip to Norway. In April he made an appearance at the town hall in Silsden in conversation with a BBC radio presenter.  

Graham Chadwick of the Daily Mail managed to catch Eddie at his home in Woodchester, Gloucestershire, earlier this month (Nov. 5, 2025).

“The Eagle is treading carefully around his nest, sidestepping a small hole in the floor in front of his staircase before navigating the sheer chaos of a room that is meant to become his kitchen one day.

“‘I’ve lived here three years,’ the Eagle says. ‘I’ve made a room upstairs habitable and sleep there. I’ll do the rest when I have time in the next few years — I’m sure it’ll be nice when I’m finished.’

“‘When I first moved in here in 2015, after I was divorced from my wife, I slept in the shed for about a year,’ the Eagle says.

“‘Yes, in the shed. I had bought this house to do up while my wife and I were still together and I took the roof off it, but then we split and I left the family home to come here. With no roof, I stayed in the shed that year.

“‘I’ve barely had a night off in 18 months,’ he says. ‘That’s why I haven’t done the house — make hay while the sun shines. When the time comes that people don’t care I will go back to the day job.’”

Steven Pye of the Guardian (Feb. 4, 2014) summed up Eddie’s legacy like this: “For some, he was a hero who sacrificed a lot to live the dream: an athlete who competed with a smile on his face, and deservedly reaped the rewards of his unexpected fame while he could. For others, Edwards was a laughing stock who belittled both the sport of ski jumping and the 1988 Winter Olympics, and represented everything that was bad in a nation that seemed to adore sporting losers.”