Nagaoka handshaker1/6/2023 ![]() ![]() I was no better than anyone else, I was just crazy. And I'm worried this guy is going to get hurt, exploited." The British team put him in seclusion after he appeared with a nightclub act called "Red, White and Hot." Said Kevin Ryan of Vancouver, British Columbia: "There's some humor in it, but I think a guy should have to have some winnings to get into the Olympics. Then there was Eddy (actually named Michael), and suddenly he was being courted for appearances and endorsements by a vodka company, a cigar company and the media. Here in wholesome, straightforward Canada, land of big chins and good neighbors, where a man can draw a cheering crowd on a Calgary sidewalk by lighting a sparkler and shouting "Ca-na-da!" there's a shortage of irony that the Olympics do nothing to alleviate. If he weren't serious, there wouldn't be any irony in calling him "the Eagle" and chanting for him so wildly. ![]() ![]() "I've always tried to be the fastest, the strongest. When he finished 58th in the 70-meter jump, the Spanish were 57th, though they were a sizable 13.5 meters in front of Eddy's 55 meters, compared with Finnish gold medalist Matti Nykanen's 89.5 meters. I'm going for the gold as much as anybody." "I know I'm not a world-class jumper, but at the moment I'm the best jumper Great Britain has. He has cadged coaching from the Americans, Canadians, Swiss, West Germans, Austrians, East Germans, "even the Spanish," Eddy says. He may wear pink-rimmed glasses that give him the blank, pitiful gaze of an angora rabbit, he may have slept at a mental hospital and lived on bread and jam when he trained in Finland, but he is serious. He is a 24-year-old plasterer from Cheltenham, England, a working-class eccentric who started ski jumping two years ago at Lake Placid, N.Y., with a pair of $60 skis, a helmet he tied on with string and boots so big he had to wear six pairs of socks. No matter that he beat Eddy's jump of 64 meters by about 50 percent. "Ed-dy!" The poor German who jumped before him had to go down the slope to the sound of this mad chanting. A British tabloid announced on its front page: "Eagle Eddy's a bigger draw than Elvis." The Calgary Sun ran a picture of Britain's Prince Edward under the caption "Britain's Other Eddy." Backslappers and handshakers forced him to Banff, where he could practice jumping in peace. ![]() Sportswriters applauded when he came into the room. Nagaoka handshaker trial#Listening to the shouts ricocheting off the snow, you couldn't help but worry that there was an overtone of a crowd looking up at a window ledge and shouting "Jump! Jump!" Before Eddy's trial run today, the announcer said, somewhat ominously, "You want him? You got him." But Calgarians and Olympic visitors were crazy with love for Eddy, like children fighting over a bewildered puppy. Now he was endless seconds past his customary prayer of "May I survive," stretched out in a hopeless yearning for the brown horizon of the Alberta plains, with the helicopters hovering in a sky with a daytime moon. and then, finally, with all auguries defied, and with all the grace of a thrown wash rag, he launched, he flew.Īll weekend, there had been rumors that the British team, the International Ski Federation - somebody, anybody - would stop Eddy from jumping, would save him from himself. 23 - Eddy (the Eagle) Edwards didn't start down the 90-meter ski jump today as much as he seemed to sort of lapse down it, now-or-never, what the hell, his great frantic chin jutting into the wind, his hour come 'round at last, the crowd chanting "Ed-dy! Ed-dy!". ![]()
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