Plot summary

A semi-fictional account of the rise to fame of Eddie 'The Eagle' Edwards is told, he, since a young age, whose aspiration to be an Olympian far stronger than the odds against him in not being very athletic, not being very coordinated, being nearsighted, and not having the meaningful support, financial or otherwise, to achieve the goal, besides the emotional support of his mother who did not want to burst the dreams of a child. By 1987, at 22, he managed to teach himself an Olympic sport which he performed adequately, namely downhill skiing. Regardless, he is told by the British Olympic Committee that he would not only not make the 1988 British Olympic ski team, this the one and only year he would even have a shot in being prime age, but that he never would in just not having enough inherent talent as an athlete. In learning that the Brits are not and have not fielded a team since the 1920s and that under existing British Olympic Committee rules he would only need to have completed a sanctioned competition to qualify, Eddie decides instead to change sports to make it into the 1988 Winter Olympics despite never haven participated in the sport at all before: ski jumping, he traveling to Garmisch, Germany to learn how to do it. Added to the list of positives fighting the odds against is the needed attribute of fearlessness. Unlike the self teaching he has done before with skiing and other sports, Eddie quickly discovers that that will only take him so far in not even being able to jump the smaller Olympic hill, the 70m, without that help. He is able to secure a "coach" of sorts, Bronson Peary, despite Bronson not totally agreeing with Eddie's motives. Bronson is a black sheep like Eddie in being an American ex-jumper from the 1970s who fell out of favor with the sport's establishment, including his then coach Warren Sharp, Bronson now an alcoholic and piste driver at Garmisch, where no one except the all knowing Petra, a server at a local bar, knows his truth. But with every step forward Eddie and Bronson are able to take, they hit one wall after another, from the British Olympic Committee, other athletes, especially members of the British Olympic team and other ski jumpers, and his father, who only wants him to focus on a real life and not an unachievable pipe dream.—Huggo