Eddie the Eagle: The Last-Place Olympian Who Won the World

What if the most famous athlete at an Olympic Games finished dead last, by a comical margin? This episode follows Michael Eddie Edwards, the working-class plasterer who became Britain's first Olympic ski jumper at the 1988 Calgary Games and charmed the planet while the sporting establishment fumed. It's a story about the tension between elite athletic purity and the unstoppable human will to simply participate.We trace how Eddie exploited a loophole, switching from downhill to ski jumping because Britain had no other jumpers, then trained on borrowed gear, wore six pairs of socks, and slept in a Finnish mental hospital for cheap rent. We cover his last-place finishes, the affection that made him a global celebrity, and the IOC's Eddie the Eagle rule that locked him out, plus his bankruptcy, his law degree, a Finnish pop single, and the 2016 biopic.How a lack of British competition opened an Olympic loopholeThe physical disadvantages that made him a rock among paper airplanesWhy officials called him an Olympic tourist and changed the rulesThe British ski jumping record he held for 13 yearsHis unexpected second acts as a law graduate and reality TV regular