TikTok’s favourite Olympian is again on the world stage, and she or he’s as soon as once more exhibiting tens of millions of viewers a glimpse into what life’s like within the Olympic Village.
Ilona Maher, a member of the U.S. girls’s rugby group, introduced her area of interest sport into the limelight three years in the past when she shot to web fame documenting her candid, typically awkward expertise on the Tokyo Olympics.
Now, having amassed greater than 1.6 million followers on TikTok and 1.5 million on Instagram, Maher is in Paris sharing her newfound appreciation for handball, poking enjoyable at her personal clumsy makes an attempt at flirting, and exhibiting off her opening ceremony outfit. Former Philadelphia Eagles heart Jason Kelce additionally appeared in one in every of Maher’s movies, through which he declares his love for ladies’s rugby.”I knew that if I saved this up, bought individuals watching me on TikTok, they’d additionally tune in to my sport,” Maher, 27, informed NBC Information’ Savannah Sellers in an interview.
On the delayed 2020 Tokyo Olympics, held in 2021, the rugby star drew in tens of millions along with her sequence testing out the athletes’ infamous cardboard beds — comparable to by performing yoga on it, doing burpees on it and giving start to a teammate. She additional captivated viewers along with her impression of what it is like making small speak and struggling to flirt with different Olympians, in addition to her raving over the deep-fried cheese within the Olympic Village.
Viewers who tuned in to Maher’s movies typically thanked her for “carrying” Olympic TikTok along with her facetious updates, with some expressing a sudden curiosity in girls’s rugby after watching her content material. The athlete additionally attracted reward from the likes of web star Hank Inexperienced, who tagged Maher in a 2021 video saying he was “hyped for ladies’s rugby sevens this 12 months.”
Maher, raised in Vermont, first tried rugby her senior 12 months of highschool earlier than occurring to play at Quinnipiac College, the place she graduated in 2018 with a nursing diploma. She joined USA Rugby proper after faculty, and this 12 months shall be her second expertise competing within the Olympics.
Outdoors of sharing snippets of her life as an elite athlete, Maher has additionally been vocal on-line about physique acceptance, sharing that she has typically obtained feedback calling her physique “masculine” due to her muscular construct.
“There’ll at all times be damaging individuals on the market they usually put girls in a field, they usually assume girls must be fragile and petite and quiet and meek, however that is not the case,” Maher stated via tears in a 2022 video. “Girls might be sturdy, they usually can have broad shoulders they usually can take up house and they are often huge.”
The athlete has continued circulating her message within the Olympic Village this month, together with by sharing a reminder in regards to the range of physique varieties seen amongst Olympians and by exhibiting off how she fuels her physique.
She additionally shared earlier this month that she has been thought of obese her entire life by physique mass index requirements, however that this type of measurement does not relay how a lot muscle a person has or how match they’re as an athlete.
“So yeah, I do have a BMI of 30%. I’m thought of obese,” she stated in a video replying to an Instagram remark. “However alas, I’ll the Olympics and you are not.”