Swimsuit

Olympian Ilona Maher Signs With the Bristol Bears of England’s Premiership Women’s Rugby

The Team USA star and social media sensation is going global.

Ananya Panchal

Ilona Maher
Ilona Maher / Cameron Spencer/Getty Images

Ilona Maher is a Bristol Bear! The Olympian, who brought home Team USA’s first bronze medal in rugby sevens at the Paris Games this summer, is headed to England for the next few months as she joins the Bristol Bears of England’s Premiership Women’s Rugby (PWR) league.

The team and organization announced the news today, Dec. 2 with a powerful series of IG pics.

“Beast. Beauty. Brains. BEAR. 🐻,” the official Bears Instagram account wrote in a joint post with the 28-year-old, referencing her signature inspirational hashtag. The Vermont native, who now lives in San Diego, primarily,

“I want to put myself in the best position to hopefully be selected for the World Cup. I really love what the PWR is doing and I think I love their branding, I think that’s really cool. I have been in the USA sevens for six years now. So I wanted to try something different, go and live somewhere else, meet new people,” she told The Guardian. “I do feel like the first day of school, I am nervous, I don’t know everybody. It is a stressful thing and it is outside of my comfort zone but I think this is exactly what I love to do and I like to challenge myself in this way.”

Maher traveled to England last week to meet her teammates and explore the country but will be back in the U.S. for Christmas before returning to Bristol ahead for the first match of the season against Gloucester-Hartpury on Jan. 4.

Since the PWR is rugby 15s and not sevens like Maher is accustomed to, she wasn’t eligible at first. However, Bristol pushed to acquire a visa for the athlete, going through an appeals process with the Rugby Football Union, and they were successful.

She is under a three-month contract with the team, which ends in the final March 16 match, and the future beyond the spring remains up in the air.

“I think [my plan] is to see how it goes right now. Who knows how this goes? What other opportunities pop up?” Maher continued. “I would love to go back to sevens because a home Olympics would be amazing to play in 2028. That is the plan but also I have been doing sevens for six years and I have literally done it since I got out of college. So I want to see what else and build a little bit now.”

Los Angeles is set to host the 2028 games.

The SI Swimsuit model has been all over the news lately for her empowering body positive social media content, September digital cover issue and comedic, trailblazing presence on Season 33 of Dancing With the Stars (where she just finished runner-up with partner Alan Bersten). The content creator has amassed a following of 4.6 million on Instagram and 3.3 million on TikTok and she‘s only growing from there, especially now that she’s got even more of a global audience.

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Ananya Panchal
ANANYA PANCHAL

Ananya Panchal is a writer on the Lifestyle and Trending News team for SI Swimsuit. Before joining SI Swimsuit in 2022, she worked at Bustle, the San Francisco Chronicle and the TODAY Show. When she is not writing or doom-scrolling on social media, Panchal can be found playing sudoku, rewatching One Tree Hill or trying new restaurants. She's also a coffee and chocolate (separately) enthusiast. Panchal has a bachelor’s in communications and journalism from Boston University.

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