explorer or a brave soldier but a builder and plasterer from Gloucester, Michael Edwards. I have come to meet him in a small coffee shop on Stroud High Street.
With a rucksack slung over one shoulder, the now clean-shaven Edwards is still instantly recognizable. Nearly thirty years ago, he became an unlikely national hero when he finished last in the 70m and 90m ski jump at the Winter Olympics in Calgary, Canada.
Eddie looks thinner than I remember him, but then maybe it was all the padding he had to wear during those jumps. Without his moustache he looks slightly younger. He is fit and healthy-looking as he takes off a small day pack and apologises (English tick) for being a little late.
I’m actually quite star-struck; you see, I really am a child of the Vancouver games. It hit the sweet spot during my adolescence and Eddie ‘the Eagle’ Edwards, as he became known, was the hero of the day. I can still remember sitting on Mum and Dad’s bed watching with bated breath as he took to the ski jump. The whole nation held its breath. We never expected him to do well, but as with the weather, we were forever hopeful. Eddie offered us the exoticism of snow and winter and cold combined with his ‘bloke next door’ derring-do. He was a cross between Shackleton and Benny Hill.
That winter he gave the nation hope. A one-man army batting above his weight. A nation weighed down with sporting failure could only ascend.
‘I’ve just been on a cruise,’ he said, explaining his tan. I asked him what he thought it was that made him stand out from the crowd. ‘Being the underdog,’ he replied, ‘they liked the pluckiness’.
I wonder whether he felt fairly portrayed by the press. Was he, is he, the hapless, clueless builder? He smiles and winks. I can only assume from his demeanour that he played the game well: an 80s Joey Essex.
The English are always better when disarmed. We are not as generous with the bravado and arrogance of winners. We prefer modesty and understatement. It is a peculiarity of the English and Eddie is the benchmark. He doesn’t have the presence that some great people carry with them but he exudes an eccentric swagger. He is certainly brave, but in many ways Eddie is the perfect example of the Englishman. Slightly wonky-toothed. Plucky. Bold. Eccentric. Hapless. Failing. Odd. He is a jar of Marmite and the weather in one. Cloudy with a chance of Marmite showers. He has that English charm. A walking apology.
We sit largely unnoticed as we sip our tea (English tick) in Stroud Costa Coffee. Me and this goliath of Englishness.
Eddie the Eagle defines a unique type of heroism that defies the norm and is English to the core: his oversized milk-bottle glasses and helmet tied with string were the exact opposite of the typical profile of the Winter Olympics competitor. Yet perhaps for that reason, he captured the world’s imagination with his nerve and fearless attitude. Above all, his fame was not based on success but failure. Eddie the Eagle was for a time the most famous failure in England. As a sporting and academic failure myself, for a time he gave me hope: he was the little guy taking on the world in a series of terrifying jumps.
Edwards had a dream from childhood about being an Olympian. As a teenager he became obsessed with downhill skiing after going on a school skiing trip. He achieved some success despite having no money – he was self-educated, working class and about as different from the British Olympic establishment as you could get. Defeated by money, he remained determined to wear the British Olympic tracksuit. Effectively shunned by the Olympic movement, he had a brainwave and decided to enter the ski jump; he had never jumped before, but Britain had no competitors. So, if he achieved the qualifying distance, he would be a shoo-in for the team in Calgary in 1988. He qualified … just. But if he thought he’d won over the establishment he was wrong; they continued to oppose his participation in the Games, considering him a national embarrassment. Happily, the huge worldwide television audience, me included, thought differently and he became a global sporting phenomenon.
Despite his last-place finishes in both the 70m and 90m competitions, cheering the plucky underdog became a national pastime. Edwards epitomized everything we English love about an amateur hero: he simply played the game, with no care about whether he won or lost.
When he came home, his face was everywhere and his earnings were huge. Over time, the bookings fell away – and this is what I love about his story. He went back to his plastering job, which he still does part time today.
Edwards tried to qualify for the next three Winter Olympics, but failed – thanks to a rule specifically designed to keep amateurs like him out – often hurting himself in the process. Over the course of his career, he fractured his skull twice and broke his jaw, collarbone, ribs, knee, fingers, thumbs, toes, back and neck. ‘I think the only bones I haven’t broken are my shoulder, hip and thigh,’ he says.
He retired at the age of thirty-four in 1998. In a further twist to his amazing story, a trust he’d set up to hold and manage his earnings failed and he was declared bankrupt in 1992. Again, a huge setback only spurred him on. He was fascinated by the legal process and decided to retrain as a lawyer. He went back to school, gained his qualifications – starting with GCSEs – and finally obtained a law degree from De Montfort University in 2003, fifteen years after the Calgary Winter Olympics.
He says he has always believed that with ‘resistance and tenacity you can achieve anything’. ‘We are a resilient nation,’ he says, ‘but we are moving towards the US mentality’ of success marked by medals rather than just participating and doing your best. The last few Olympic Games, the Tour de France, golf and now the America’s Cup have all transformed the English sporting reputation from hapless failure to hero and the Eddies of this world have been replaced by bleached-toothed sporting machines.
Eddie is still very much in demand. A regular on the speaking circuit, he has even had a Hollywood film made about his life. As we say farewell I wonder whether this kind of English sporting hero has become an endangered species in a country that has pulled up its socks when it comes to sport. In my mind, though, Eddie will remain my own sporting hero, taking on the establishment and winning.
In many ways, Eddie the Eagle was merely following the centuries-old recipe created by our rich history of explorers who specialized in that plucky derring-do, have-a-go attitude. As a tiny island nation we have produced some of the world’s greatest explorers and adventurers; but what defines many of the great English expeditions is failure. We take on a challenge knowing that it is doomed to fail but press on regardless. Shackleton, Scott, Fawcett, Mallory … the long list of heroic failures seems to define a unique kind of Englishness. Is that dogged determination in the face of adversity part of the romance, the danger and exhilaration of treading the fine line between success and failure? A little like our sport and even our weather, we appear to have an inevitable resignation to being doomed to failure.
This admiration of failure goes hand in hand with the fact that we have never been particularly good at celebrating success. I’m not sure if it’s pessimism, guilt or jealousy, but we have a strange relationship with high achievement. We often describe it as tall-poppy syndrome, the phenomenon whereby we will root for individuals until their stem – success – becomes too tall, and then we cut them down to size.
As an island nation, more used to looking to the horizon to ward off invaders, England took a surprisingly long time to use her maritime expertise to explore the world beyond our borders. Portugal and Spain were pioneers in undertaking voyages in the so-called Age of Discovery of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. They established vast and enviably wealthy empires, prompting England – in a race against France and the Netherlands – to sail forth to claim colonies and set up trade networks of their own in the Americas and in Asia. Then, in the sixteenth century, along came Sir Francis Drake, Sir Martin Frobisher and Anthony Jenkinson, and the English adventurer was born, ushering in an era of investigation around the globe which has had a lasting effect on the society in which we live today. Explorers raised anchor and set off with an ambitious to-do list. They were determined to discover new lands, to further scientific enquiry, to bring home new mineral and agricultural resources, to map the world in greater detail – and to make a name (and fortune) for themselves. The dangers were real; the adventure exhilarating. Such hazardous missions were open to all social classes. A roll call of the best-known