Former British ski jumper Eddie 'The Eagle' Edwards has revealed he resorted to scavenging food from bins and sleeping in his car to survive before the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics. Edwards, who took up the sport just 22 months before the Games, trained at Gloucester Ski Centre's artificial slopes and described himself as a 'charity case' during that period.
Speaking on the BBC's Sport's Greatest Underdogs podcast, Edwards said: 'I was scraping food out of bins. 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.' He also slept in his vehicle in temperatures as low as -25C.
Edwards, from Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, would befriend chefs and hotel kitchen staff to get free meals, following advice from his builder father. He recalled: '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. 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.'
British Scout groups also helped by giving him spare food. Meanwhile, other jumpers stayed in five-star hotels with access to doctors and psychologists. Edwards said: 'There was just me on my own. I was like a charity case really. It was tough - but I had so much fun.'
