Yacht owner, former F1 team boss and television personality Eddie Jordan OBE has died aged 76.
Born in Dublin, Ireland in 1948, Jordan's motorsports career began at the tender age of 23, when he won the Irish Kart Championship in 1971. Three years later, he would move to Formula Ford to make his mark, winning the Irish Formula Atlantic Championship in 1978, racing in the British Formula Three and Formula Two and even doing a small amount of testing for McLaren.
Jordan founded his first team, Eddie Jordan Racing, in 1979, though he is better known for Jordan Grand Prix, which gave Michael Schumacher his Formula One debut (in the team's debut season) and won the Belgian and Brazilian Grand Prix in 1998 and 2003. His wealth of experience and keen racing acumen resulted in a six-year stint as chief analyst for Formula One coverage on the BBC. His passion for sports would continue far beyond his racing days, with Jordan becoming a shareholder in the Celtic Football Club and the co-owner of the historic London Irish Rugby Club (the latter co-owned by his son Kyle Jordan).
A familiar face in the industry, Jordan served on the board of directors for Oyster Yachts from 2018 to 2021, later becoming the brand ambassador for the British yacht builders. He was also a yacht owner – purchasing the 45.6-metre Perini Navi sailing yacht Blush back in 2018 – and a dear friend of BOAT International. A regular contributor to the magazine, he ran the column "Lippy from the Liffey" for well over a decade, indulging readers in reflections and stories from his life. Some highlights included run-ins with baboons in Botswana, a high-stakes negotiation with Canadian businessman Lawrence Stroll, an encounter with Tom Cruise at a wedding and his frequent Caribbean excursions on board Blush.
His rich sporting career was complemented by philanthropic endeavours, including his patronage to the child cancer charity CLIC Sargent and youth charity, the Amber Foundation, with the former earning him an OBE. He would also always request that his fees for his "Lippy from the Liffey" be donated to charity.
"I can't make sense of Eddie not being here," said BOAT's editor-in-chief, Stewart Campbell. "He was truly one of life's greatest characters, and whatever he was doing or wherever he was in the world, he always made time to speak to me for his BOAT International column. I am utterly devastated that he's gone."
He continued: "Whenever I was in his company I was laughing, or my jaw was on the floor as he reeled off another incredible anecdote about his career in F1, engineering some unlikely business deal or meeting a megawatt celebrity. Even when he got sick, the stories kept flowing. I will miss him terribly, like so many others. I'm sending all my love to his amazing wife Marie and four children, Zoe, Miki, Zak and Kyle."