WHATEVER HAPPENED TO EDDIE THE EAGLE? I came across this question while reading the archaeology article by Franz Lidz. Lidz asked and answered the question in this article at the Smithsonian site in 2014. I was glad to see that Eddie seems to be happy; at least Lidz tells us that he laughs often. He lives with his wife and two daughters in a small English village and has an income of about 50,0000 pounds a year from various celebrity appearances.
Kids, you know that I will follow or watch all kinds of sporting competitions. There was a time in the late 1980’s when your mother and I —along with a lot of other people around the world—spent quite a bit of time watching Michael “Eddie the Eagle” Edwards compete in ski jumping, including at the Calgary Olympics. Eddie was the entire Great Britain team in those Olympics. He was not successful. This wikipedia article says that he finished “last in both individual events, with less than half the points of the second-last competitor”. And Lidz —with unnecessary harshness—describes his style: “Others flew. Only the Eagle could launch off a mountain and plummet like a dead parrot.”
But as Eddie points out: he was the best in his country and held the country’s unofficial 70-meter record, having broken the previous record, which had been set in the 1920’s.