Eddie the Eagle was eating out of bins and slept in his car before Winter Olympics fame

Eddie the Eagle will always be remembered for his efforts at the 1988 Winter Olympics, but few knew the reality of what it took for him to get there

Few names are more synonymous with the Winter Olympics than Eddie the Eagle. But before shooting to fame at the 1988 Games, Michael Edwards was a penniless “charity case” who ate out of bins and slept in his car.

As Team GB’s first-ever ski jumper, support was far from readily available. Edwards, now 62, scrounged and saved his way to Calgary, where he memorably finished dead last in the 70m and 90m events.

A daily charge to train in Lake Placid, New York? He shovelled snow to make it free. No equipment? He got some from lost property. Not enough money to spend on food? He befriended a hotel chef and cut his grass for meals on the house.

“I was scraping food out of bins,” Edwards told 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.'”

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Naturally, the temperatures were well below freezing. But not even -25 degrees Celsius would force Edwards to ditch his vehicle for more luxurious settings.

Nothing was going to stop him from fulfilling his dream of competing at the Olympics. Having originally intended on competing at Sarajevo 1984 as a downhill skier, Edwards realised he had a better chance of qualifying for ski jumping – because there was no one else in the country doing it.

He first represented Great Britain at the 1987 World Championships, and discovered he’d be Olympics-bound while working as a plasterer and staying in a Finnish mental hospital. It was impossible for him not to become the talk of the town when he rocked up in his thick, aviator-style glasses, which he had no choice but to keep on under his pink goggles.

He captured hearts and sparked plenty of laughs en route to comically bad scores. He shouldn’t have been there, hence why the ‘Eddie the Eagle Rule’ essentially banning amateurs was subsequently introduced.

But that only transpired because nobody had gone to the lengths he had to make his dream a reality before. He went from making £7,000 a year to £700,000 as a worldwide sensation.

“The most I earned in one day was something like £65,000, and that was back in 1988,” Edwards told the Daily Star in 2023. “I opened a fun ride in Alton Towers, then I was flown to London to open a sports shop before being taken to film a Women’s Own commercial. Then I did a nightclub promotion in the evening.”

However, he fell on hard times once again as his appearance fees were stashed in a trust fund that went bust in the nineties. Edwards declared bankruptcy and sued the trustees for mismanagement, settling out of court for a reported £100,000.

He’s remained in the public eye over the last three decades, with a 2016 biopic starring Taron Egerton, Hugh Jackman and Christopher Walken banking him around £180,000 in royalties. But divorcing ex-wife Samantha was another financial hit, moving into his garden shed and living off sandwiches while he developed his home.

He told the Sunday Times: “I had to give all that to my ex-wife. I still haven’t paid the tax on it. I’ve had to sell my flat in Bedford, which I bought about 30 years ago, to pay my anticipated tax bill.

“I was just unlucky. Because we had children, and other factors, I ended up losing 85 per cent. If you think about it too much, you get depressed, so I think, ‘I made it once, I made it twice, I can make it three times.’”

Ultimately, it was never about the money for Eddie. He showed determination that embodied the Olympic spirit, and for that he’ll forever hold a special place in the history of the Games.