Olympic legend Eddie ‘The Eagle’ Edwards admits ‘one large remorse’ from skijumping heyday

Olympic legend Michael ‘Eddie The Eagle’ Edwards was brave enough to risk life and limb on a ski slope at the 1988 Winter Olympics – but talking to women was another matter

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If you had to pick a word to describe Eddie the Eagle, it probably wouldn’t be “shy.” Not after he exploded into the public eye, aged 24, at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, beaming and punching the air like he’d just won the 90m event instead of coming last.

His thick glasses and infectious enthusiasm made him a global celebrity. And the sport he represented, which sees jumpers reach extreme heights at speeds of 80mph or more, took serious guts.

But behind the scenes, the former plasterer from Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, still had his timid side. He speaks fondly of his time in Calgary’s Olympic Village – with just one lingering regret.

“I had a huge crush on Katarina Witt back in the day,” he says. “She was gorgeous. But I never went to her room and had a had a kiss and cuddle with her. I wish I had!”

Eddie was so starstruck by the German figure skater, who won gold for her routine to Bizet’s opera Carmen, he didn’t even try and chat her up.

“I was useless back then,” he adds. “I would rather go ski jumping than try and chat up a lady. I was that shy.”

Eddie would have better luck later in life, including two daughters with ex-wife Sam Morton. The 62-year-old has just bought a house with new partner Karen Pearce, 48, in the village of Kingsclere, Hampshire.

Back in 1988, though, he had more pressing concerns. Unlike his competitors, his Olympic journey was totally self-funded, and he’d gone through hell to get to the prestigious competition.

He had nowhere to sleep while he was training, spending the nights in his car as he travelled between European contests, before moving to a VW camper van. When he learned he had qualified for the British team, he was staying – as a guest, rather than a patient – at a Finnish mental hospital.

What made him so determined? “I think because people said it can’t be done,” he admits. “When I started skiing and fell in love with the sport, I told all my family and friends that I wanted to go to the Winter Olympics and they just laughed.

“They said it can’t be done, it’s impossible. We don’t even have any snow. The more that people told me that I couldn’t do something, the more that inspired me to prove them wrong.”

So it made sense that he’d go through anything to get there, “scraping food out of bins” when he couldn’t afford to eat. Or at least, almost anything. He’s not impressed by recent reports of ski jumpers injecting their willies with filler to gain a tiny surface area advantage.

“Even if it did help, I certainly wouldn’t have done it,” he says. “The pain wouldn’t be worth the benefit of maybe one or two extra metres. I’d have thought ‘Nah, you’re all right mate, I won’t bother.’”

For Eddie, as the first British ski jumper to compete at the Olympics, placing last in both the 70m and 90m events still felt like a victory. And besides, he was in it for the long haul.

He says: “I’d only been jumping for 22 months. Everybody else there had been jumping for 25 years. I was very much a beginner.

“And yet if I’d have been given chance, I thought, ‘Well, maybe I will be as good as them and I will be able to have a proper place on the world stage.”

Sadly, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) stepped in to clip his wings. They created the ‘Eddie the Eagle Rule’ in 1990, which requires competitors to be ranked in the top 30% or top 50 in the world in their sport.

Eddie tried and failed to qualify for the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville, the 1994 Games in Lillehammer and the 1998 Games in Nagano. Defeated, he went to study law at De Montfort University in Leicester.

These days, the athlete is making a healthy living on the motivational speaking circuit – thanks in part to the movie based on his life. Eddie the Eagle, starring Taron Egerton and Hugh Jackman, became the highest-grossing British film of 2016.

And he’s still finding time for the occasional jump, he says. “I enjoy it to this day”

He adds: “I last jumped about four years ago and in September this year, I’m going to Switzerland to the 10th anniversary of a ski jump centre that I used to train at over 40 years ago.

“I’m going to take my jumping boots and do some jumping there.”

• Eddie the Eagle has partnered with Readly, the digital magazine and newspaper app, to celebrate this month’s Winter Olympics in Milano, Cortina.
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