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Edwards pictured competing at the 1988 Winter Olympics (Photo: Getty)<\/p>\n\n\t\t\t\t\tThe Winter Olympics cult hero on horrific injuries he sustained ski jumping, proving people wrong and what he wants to do on his 100th birthday\t\t\t\t\t <\/p>\n
My Sporting Life is The i Paper\u2019s look behind the curtain at what drives sports stars to greatness. This week we speak to ski jumper Michael \u201cEddie the Eagle\u201d Edwards who captured the hearts of the British public after finishing last at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary.<\/p>\n
The highlight of my career was competing at the 1988 Winter Olympics<\/p>\n
For me, getting there was my gold medal. No one expected me to qualify, let alone compete at the Games. I can still remember it to this day, even though it has been 38 years.<\/p>\n
I did the World Championships in 1987, and that was brilliant. But the Winter Olympics is next level, really. It was fantastic.<\/p>\n
Edwards pictured competing at the 1988 Winter Olympics (Photo: Getty)<\/p>\n
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Even though I\u2019ve jumped further, it is still my proudest achievement. My personal best is 119.5m. So I\u2019m pleased I managed to get a certain level, even though most people didn\u2019t see it because it was in training.<\/p>\n
Ski jumping is a lot safer than it used to be<\/p>\n
There\u2019s nothing like jumping when you know if you get it wrong it could really, really hurt, you could even die. <\/p>\n
I fractured my skull twice, which is quite difficult to do because you\u2019re wearing a helmet. I broke my jaw in two places, smashed my collarbone in five places, broke three ribs and damaged my kidney. But that was out of about 25,000 jumps, so one injury every 5,000 jumps, which isn\u2019t too bad, really. <\/p>\n
My worst accident was a broken back and neck. I was 18, working in Italy. I\u2019ve broken lots of things, but I\u2019m lucky that I don\u2019t suffer from the injuries. I don\u2019t have any arthritis problems or anything like that.<\/p>\n
The biggest mistake I made was allowing my trustees to look after my trust fund<\/p>\n
All the money I earned from Calgary went into a trust fund. I had three trustees looking after that money, and they looked after it very badly, and I didn\u2019t have enough. They made me bankrupt. So HMRC allowed me to sue my trustees for alleged mismanagement and negligence, and I got some of my money back.<\/p>\n
Now I\u2019m very, very careful, and I tend to put my money into property because I\u2019m a builder and plasterer, so I know more about property than I do about stocks and shares. I\u2019m quite happy to put money into an interest account, earning maybe four or five per cent interest, and I\u2019m okay with that. It\u2019s very, very low risk.<\/p>\n
Whereas I can buy a house, I can do it up myself and I can sell it. I used to do that a lot. I don\u2019t do it so much now as I\u2019m getting older.<\/p>\n
I want to ski down a mountain on my 100th birthday<\/p>\n
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Edwards says he has been through injury hell over the years (Photo: Getty)<\/p>\n
I want to ski down a red run or a black run somewhere, whether it be Austria, Italy or Switzerland. That\u2019s top of my bucket list. I like to stay active.<\/p>\n
I think if I become a couch potato, maybe I\u2019ll start to seize up. So it\u2019s a good excuse to keep moving. I want to be able to do as much as I can for as long as I possibly can.<\/p>\n
There are certain sports that I still love to watch, but I can only watch about 10 minutes before I get bored because I\u2019d rather be out there doing it myself. I support Liverpool, but I couldn\u2019t tell you who plays. I couldn\u2019t sit down and watch a football match.<\/p>\n
The lessons I learned are still with me to this day <\/p>\n
It was hard sleeping in the back of the car, sleeping in a caravan, sleeping in the back of a van, sleeping in a cow shed, scraping food out of a bin, sleeping in a psychiatric hospital. But all these things gave me so many valuable life lessons that I wouldn\u2019t have got any other way. And I think that\u2019s more important than winning a gold medal. <\/p>\n
I\u2019m very grateful for the attention and the inspiration I\u2019ve given people but it was not my intention to do that. I just want people to go out there and live their lives. If they get inspiration from my story, then that\u2019s great. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s nice to be remembered for that resilience, that tenacity, that determination, that never giving up. No matter how many people tell you you can\u2019t do it, if you think you can, you get out there and prove them wrong.<\/p>\n
The strangest experience I\u2019ve had was in an Amsterdam brothel<\/p>\n
It was an interview I did for Dutch television. It was at a high-class brothel in Amsterdam called the Yab Yum Club. <\/p>\n
We were both lying on the bed, and he was interviewing me about being a celebrity, saying \u201cyou must have had lots of women throwing themselves at you\u201d and all that kind of stuff.<\/p>\n
Being British, naturally I was rather uptight about the whole thing. Of course, the Dutch don\u2019t have that problem. So that was certainly one of the strangest things I\u2019ve done.<\/p>\n