There’s really not many female athletes who can claim to be true superstars.
By superstar, I don’t just mean someone who’s good, or even great, at their sport and nor do I mean someone who’s achieved considerable success.
What I mean by superstar is someone who transcends their sport. Who’s a household name in homes that don’t even like sport.
Some of the first female superstar athletes include Billie-Jean King, Martina Navratilova, Nadia Comaneci and Olga Korbut and over the past decade-or-so, there’s been Serena and Venus Williams, Maria Sharapova, Simone Biles and Megan Rapinoe. What links every one of these women is their undisputed status as the very best at their sport during their careers, as well as having a raised profile. All are included in all-time greatest athlete lists.
Which is why sport’s latest breakthrough is quite so surprising.
Ilona Maher is the most recently-emerged female sporting superstar. She is, arguably, the most widely-recognised female name in sport. She may not be particularly well-known amongst over-40s but for Millenials and, even more so, Gen Z, Maher is absolutely huge.
For those who’ve missed the Maher explosion, she’s a 29-year-old American rugby player from Vermont who has transformed herself into a phenomenon.
She has nearly 10 million followers on social media, ensuring she’s the most-followed rugby player, male or female, on the internet. For the ongoing Women’s Rugby World Cup, which is currently taking place in England, Maher is one of the poster-girls.
Indeed, earlier this week, the official Women’s Rugby World Cup website was pushing tickets for yesterday’s USA v Samoa match with the message: “Ilona Maher and the USA are back in action - don’t miss their clash with Samoa at York Community Stadium”. Given there were 30 players on the field and another 16 on the bench, it says much about Maher’s pull that she’s the one name which is singled-out.
There’s several reasons why Maher’s rise to prominence is so remarkable and, in many respects, surprising.
Firstly, she’s an athlete playing a sport that’s barely recognised in her home country. Ask your average American what rugby is and they’ll either have no clue, or they’ll be familiar with the fact it resembles NFL but know little more.
And as a player, Maher is far from the best women’s rugby player on the planet, nor does she play for anything close to the best women’s rugby team. The USA are certainly decent - they’re ranked eighth in the world and they’ve just narrowly missed out on reaching the quarter-finals at this Women’s World Cup. But the best? Absolutely not.
Her fame is as a result, in large part, of her appearance on Dancing With The Stars (America’s version of Strictly Come Dancing) late last year, in which she and her dancing partner finished runners-up.
It’s this reason why some dissenters are displeased about Maher’s rise to prominence; shouldn’t the biggest star in the sport not also be if not the very best athlete then at least amongst the best?
Perhaps, in an ideal world, this would be the case.
But while Maher isn’t the best female rugby player in the world, it makes it no less joyful that her superstar status is thriving in the way it is.
Young girls are growing-up in a world in which looking “perfect” is thrown in their faces every time they look at social media. Perfect is, almost always, slim, small and, often, blond.
Maher possesses none of these characteristics.
The American is nearly six feet tall, looks considerably different from the stick-thin celebrities that are all over the internet and, most importantly, consistently uses her platform to push body positivity messages to her following.
She is the ideal foil for what the rest of social media tells young girls they should be like and look like.
“Sport does amazing things for a girl (like me) who didn’t understand why her body looked the way it did. Sport gave me an outlet and showed me how capable I can be,” Maher said in her recent speech at recent ESPYs awards event.
“Take up space. Pitch it faster. Run harder. Put another plate on the bar. And never tone it down.“My message stays the same: Strong is beautiful. Strong is powerful. Sexy is whatever you want it to be, and I hope more girls can feel how I feel.”
It’s a laudable message and having a high-profile female athlete shouting this from the rooftops, as she does almost weekly, is invaluable.
Maher, despite the fact she’s not conventionally “pretty”, is showing that it’s okay not to weigh only eight stones, not be petite and not stay quiet.
Having someone like this in the spotlight is vital for the countless young girls who play sport but don’t look like Maria Sharapova or those who don’t play sport but don’t look like Bella Hadid. Maher is showing that it’s not just acceptable, but beneficial to look like her.
I hope Maher is successful on the rugby pitch but really, the impact she’s having off it is worth a hundred match wins.
Young girls have a lack of successful women in the spotlight to look up to who don’t look like a conventional “celebrity”. Maher is, by anyone’s standards, not a conventional-looking celebrity and the fact she shouts about how great this is is invaluable.
Long may her global following continue to grow, and long may she continue to spread her incredible message to young girls that being thin and pretty is not quite as necessary as they may think.
AND ANOTHER THING…
The recent announcement by one of Britain’s best swimmers, Tom Dean, that he’s relocating from Bath to the University of Stirling to train is not only a major coup for the university, but it’s also hugely significant for this country.
For as long as I can remember, there’s been a steady stream of athletes reaching a certain level in their sport and then upping sticks and moving south of the border to continue their career.
The decision by triple Olympic champion, Dean, at the age of 25, to move to Stirling to swim alongside, amongst others, Duncan Scott, is a sign of the respect the swimming programme at the university has gained in recent years.
Dean’s move is not only, though, confirmation of the quality of the programme Stirling - it also goes quite some way in increasing Scotland’s standing in international sporting terms.
