Belfour
Me too. I was expecting to
Me too. I was expecting to be enchanted by another one of his drunken adventures.
Belfour's theme song
"If I had a million dollars"
Another in the long line
of great British athletes!!
Elite Again
Here he is
----umhannon
Eddie was definitely
what you would call a ladies man, He has that swagger about him.
"If winning isn’t everything why do they keep score?"- uknown-
Yep, he looks like an eagle
Yep, he looks like an eagle all right. Could you give us '90s kids a crash course on this guy? Thanks.
/no snark
Abort, Retry, Fail?
Lil Bit of Ed
Qualified for 1988 Olympic ski jumping, finished dead last in both events (70m, 90m), I was 12 at the time and still remember his 'stache. That there, is an indelible 'stache.
----umhannon
Imagine that you are Usain Bolt at the Olympics
A pretty BFD, right? Now imagine that some joker from a country that has never fielded a sprinter decides to represent his country, and furthermore, he manages to get himself to be sent to the Games as an official contestant.
Oh, and (in a slight exaggeration), he has the speed of Rich Eisen.
Now this joker happens to be a card, and soon all of the press is following him around and ignoring Usain Bolt. Cheers for Eddie from the crowd dwarf those for Usain. Eddie! Eddie! Eddie! Which, of course, only makes the situation all the more hilarious, and as appropriate for the Winter Games, the absurdity only snowballs. Most sports fans like me that couldn't name a single ski-jumper got a good laugh out of it. However, the serious ski-jumping community--I'm told there is one--was pissed. A result of the farce was the Eddie the Eagle Rule.
He was a media sideshow, like the Jamaican bobsledders
He was basically a guy who wanted to go to the Olympics and wasn't nearly good enough in anything. He was OK as a downhill skiier but far from Olympic standard. But Great Britain didn't have any ski jumpers, so he adopted that as his sport and went as Britain's representative in the event. It was a fiasco. Even people who knew nothing about ski jumping (i.e. basically everyone outside maybe Finland and Norway) could see that his form was atrocious. But the media wove an "ordinary geek tastes his dream" narrative, and it caught on. The Jamaican bobsled team was at the same Olympics, and it seemed like 50% of the coverage was either them or Eddie.
They changed the eligibility rules for the next winter Olympics to prevent this sort of thing.
Leave it to the blasted rules
Leave it to the blasted rules makers to squash dreams and snuff out these kind of human interest stories. So what if some guy makes it to the Olympics and steals the imagination and interest of millions of people around the world?!
The serious athletes should probably make themselves more interesting if they want people to be more interested in them.
"Being ready is not what matters. What matters is winning after you get there."
(Lieutenant General Victor H. Krulak, USMC, April 1965.)
I think the diff. btwn the Jamaican bobsledders & Eddie T Eagle
was that the Jamaican bobsledders didn't "take over" the bobsledding events. Sure, they got a ton of coverage as a novelty, but I don't remember thinking that their participation overshadowed the event itself.
On the other hand, from my vantage point Eddie became bigger than the event itself. And I enjoyed every bit of the circus.
Google is your friend
Google is your friend
Crash Course...pun intended
1:30
"I was actually in a mental hospital at the time, when I got my notification!"
Best. Biopic. Ever.
Edit: If you pause the video at 3:18 there's a little more information on Eddie.
Abort, Retry, Fail?
Clearly a ladies man.....does
Clearly a ladies man.....does his best work below 30 degrees.
Endeavor to persevere...
Yes I know hi-jinx (high jinks) is not a word,but it looks good.
My Dinner Table Includes
Paul Girgash, Loretta Swit, and Dan & Dave from Olympic Reebok fame.
The Real Eddie the Eagle
Norm Betts?
How about Jim Betts? From "Bo's Lasting Lessons:"
I made only one exception for the black players. The day after my first team meeting, when I told everyone they’d better shave, Jim Betts came into my office to talk to me. “Coach, you’ve got to understand, for the black players, the mustache represents part of our heritage.”
“You have got to be kidding me.”
“No, Coach, I’m sincere.”
We went back and forth a few times, but Jimmy wasn’t budging — and what the hell did I know? I was from Barberton, Ohio.
The next day, I met with the team again. “It has come to my attention that the black players on this team feel they cannot with a good conscience shave their mustaches, because they feel it is part of their heritage.”
Is that a booger stuck on
Is that a booger stuck on Ed's front tooth?
Abort, Retry, Fail?
No...
...Just modern British dentistry
Ah, I was hoping this was about Ed Belfour