His prominent jaw and huge specs might have been what made him recognisable to so many, but Eddie ‘The Eagle’ Edwards decided that his public image wasn’t worth sacrificing his dental health, and had his jaw broken to save his natural teeth.
‘My dentist told me that because my front teeth didn’t meet, my back teeth were grabbing at food and being ground away,’ Eddie explains. The 49-year-old also had permanent contact lenses placed so that he doesn’t have to wear his famous chunky glasses when taking part in sporting events. He went on to add that the treatment was not due to vanity, purely for ‘dental reasons’, to prevent further damage to the back teeth and eventual tooth loss.
The underbite Eddie suffered with growing up already cost him eight adult teeth, so he underwent a procedure that involved breaking the bottom jaw and moving it back, then fracturing the top jaw to shift it forward. The former Olympian said ‘The operation wasn’t too uncomfortable but I had to have my jaw wired together for five weeks. I lived off soups, custard, and milkshakes. I had a morphine pump for the pain, which was great for when I wanted to go to sleep. I just had to give it a pump.’ He also added that the front teeth were in pretty good condition, ‘because they had so little to do over the years.’