SKI JUMPING AND SOCIAL CLASS. Eddie met with some resistance from other ski jumpers. Some of this was probably a carryover from the belief that amateur athletics were for the upper classes, people of leisure. Eddie was working class—a plasterer like his father, his grandfather, and his great grandfather. He couldn’t afford the lift tickets to compete in regular skiing so he took up ski jumping, which was cheaper. Lidz describes odd jobs that Eddie did to raise the money to permit him to practice. He even “grubbed food out of garbage cans”.
Of course, the ski jumping fraternity should have welcomed Eddie. Never before or since did the sport of ski jumping get the kind of attention that Eddie brought to it.