Matti Ensio Nykänen ( pronunciation (help·info)) (born 17 July 1963; Jyväskylä, Finland) is a Finnish former ski jumper who won five Olympic medals (four gold), nine World Championships medals (five gold) and 22 Finnish Championships medals (13 gold). Most notably, Nykänen won three gold medals at the 1988 Winter Olympics, becoming, along with Yvonne van Gennip of the Netherlands, the most successful athlete there. Nykänen is the only ski jumper in history to have won all five of the sport's major competitions; gold medal in the Olympic Games (three times), World Championships (once) and Ski flying World Championships (once), and finished first in the overall World Cup (four times) and Four Hills Tournament (twice).

Since the 1990s, his status as a celebrity has mainly been fueled, not by his sporting achievements, but instead by his colourful personal relationships, his career as a singer, and various incidents often related to heavy use of alcohol and violent behavior. He was sentenced to jail for 26 months following a stabbing incident in 2004, and again for 16 months after aggravated assault on his wife in 2009.

Mika Kojonkoski (born April 19, 1963 in Rauma, Finland) is a Finnish ski jumping coach and politician. Kojonkoski was a ski jumper himself in the 1980s, but he never reached the level of the best Finnish jumpers like Matti Nykänen. His best result was his 9th place in Chamonix, he also achieved a 16th place in the 1985 Ski flying World Championships in Planica.

As a coach however, Kojonkoski quickly became a known figure. After starting up as coach of Finland's junior team, Kojonkoski was hired as the new Austrian coach in 1997. He returned home to Finland to take over the national team in 1999, before he took over the Norwegian team in 2002 where he helped create stars like Sigurd Pettersen, Lars Bystøl, Bjørn Einar Romøren, Anders Jacobsen and Tom Hilde.

Kojonkoski is an active politician in his hometown of Kuopio, where he represents the National Coalition Party.

Mika has three children with his wife Ulla.

Michael Edwards (born 5 December 1963), better known as Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards, is a British skier who was the first competitor to represent Great Britain in Olympic ski jumping. At the time, Edwards was the British ski jumping record holder, the world number nine in amateur speed skiing (106.8 mph) and the stunt jumping world record holder (10 cars/6 buses).

Edwards was born in Cheltenham, England. A good downhill skier, he narrowly missed out on the GB team for that event for the 1984 Games. To improve his chances to qualify for 1988, he moved to Lake Placid in the US to train and enter races of a higher standard; however, he soon found himself short on funds. To realize his Olympic dream he decided to switch to ski jumping for reasons of cost and easier qualification with no other competing British ski jumpers.

Eddie began jumping under the watchful eye of Chuck Berghorn in Lake Placid, NY, using his equipment though he had to wear six layers of socks to make the boots fit. Edwards was handicapped by his weight—at about 82 kg (181 lb), more than 9 kg (20 lb) heavier than the next heaviest competitor—and by his lack of financial support for training—he was totally self-funded. Another problem was that he was very farsighted, requiring him to wear his glasses at all times, even though when skiing they fogged to such an extent that he could not see. Eddie was informed of his qualification for the Games whilst working as a plasterer and residing temporarily in a Finnish mental hospital due to lack of funds for alternative accommodation (rather than as a patient). Edwards first represented Great Britain at the 1987 World Championships, and was ranked 55th in the world and this performance qualified him, as the sole British applicant, for the 1988 Winter Olympics ski jumping competition.