Eddie 'the Eagle' Edwards 'ate out of bins' before 1988 Olympics

BBC News

01-08-2025

Eating food out of bins and sleeping in a cow shed does not sound like the perfect preparation for the Olympics, but that is what one British athlete did prior to making history.Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards said he was a "charity case" ahead of the Calgary Winter Olympics of 1988, before which he had only been ski-jumping for 22 months.The son of a builder, he practiced on the dry slope at Gloucester Ski Centre as there were no ski jumps in the UK.Despite finishing last in both the events he entered, Edwards became a household name after becoming the first British competitor in ski jumping at the Olympics.
While preparing for the Olympics in Lake Placid, New York, ski racing cost $300 per day, ski jumping cost just $5, but Edwards managed to train for free as he offered to shovel snow. Edwards, from Cheltenham, found some equipment in lost property, and tried ski jumping for the first time on purpose-built slopes."I was scraping food out of bins," Edwards told the 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."I thought, 'If I just buy bread and milk and scrape food out of bins and sleep in the car, I can stay out here for three months."Edwards said he also once slept in his car in -25°C weather.
While training in Kandersteg in Switzerland, Edwards took on board some advice from his dad who had told him: "If you ever go travelling, always make friends with a chef, you'll never go hungry.""I asked hotels if they needed any work doing... I met two brothers and they let me cut their grass and gave me a free meal," Edwards said."One of the brothers was a chef. If I was passing the hotel and he saw me, he'd open the window and lob me a tin of beans or pears. I'd think, 'Oh great, that's my meal for tonight'."
"The British Scout groups where I was staying would give me their spare food before they went home. They were lovely. "For the other jumpers at the time, they stayed in five-star hotels. They had the doctors, psychologists, and there was just me on my own."I was like a charity case really. It was tough - but I had so much fun."Sport's Greatest Underdogs is available on BBC Sounds