Eddie ‘the Eagle’ Still Looking for Respect

Eddie Edwards is still “the Eagle,� telling people about having an Olympic dream and following it.

He is a popular speaker on the topic of his quixotic quest to compete in the 1988 Winter Olympic ski-jumping competition.

You remember Eddie. He was the hapless British ski jumper, the one with the thick eyeglasses and the penchant for taking dramatic, dangerous, head-over-heel falls. He went to the Calgary Games as the first British ski jumper, as a man who trained on dry land with bad equipment and who left Calgary with two last-place finishes, the nickname “the Eagle� and folk-hero status.

“People seemed to appreciate how much I wanted to pursue something I loved,� Edwards said. “They seemed to understand how much ski jumping meant to me.�

Not everybody appreciated Edwards. Especially not his country’s Winter Olympics federation. “They were embarrassed by me,� Edwards said. “They seemed to think I was only a big joke and that somehow I wasn’t good for the image.�

Edwards was off the slopes from 1989 until 1997, when he began training with the hopes of making the 1998 Nagano Games. But he was unable to meet British qualifying standards he felt had been instituted to keep him out of competition and now is officially retired from ski jumping.

Besides doing public speaking, Edwards, 38, is a second-year law student at De Montfort University in Leicester, England. He also does a weekly radio show on the BBC and is excited about a movie project on his life.

Edwards said he decided to go to law school after being involved in a lawsuit over trusteeship of his post-Olympic earnings. Edwards was forced to declare bankruptcy in 1992 after he said a trusteeship that was supposed to invest his earnings misused the money.

“It was in going through the legal system that I decided some day I would like to be a lawyer,� Edwards said.

Edwards still wears glasses, but without the thick lenses that made the world laugh in 1988. He says he will always enjoy being “Eddie the Eagle,� and that he has no regrets about his Olympic experience.

“If there were some people who considered me a joke, I’m sorry about that,� Edwards said. “But I did not do it for any other reason except that I loved to ski jump and I had hopes that by my doing it, other people in my country would take up the sport.�

For the first time since 1988, Great Britain had an entry in the ski-jumping competition at Salt Lake City. Glynn Pedersen, 20, didn’t qualify for the finals in either the 90-meter or 120-meter event. And Edwards doesn’t really consider Pedersen his successor. Pedersen is from Thunder Bay, Canada.

“He may have qualified technically because he has some ties to England,� Edwards said. “But he’s not British. My hope is still some day that Great Britain will have another ski jumper. That’s what I hope my legacy can be.�