Ilona Maher Reveals Inspiring Mindset That Helped Her Deal With Olympic Pressure

The rugby player prioritized enjoying the process at her second Summer Games—and walked away with a bronze medal.

Ilona Maher / Joe Scarnici/Getty Images

The Paris Olympics weren’t Ilona Maher’s first brush with the international stage—but they were certainly the most significant. She walked away from the 2024 Games with a bronze medal and the first podium finish for the U.S. women’s rugby team.

The athlete’s first Olympic experience didn’t end quite as momentously. She left the Tokyo Games in 2021 without a medal to show for her and her teammates's hard work and training. It was a difficult experience for Maher, who had characteristically high ambitions for herself and her team. “It ruined me,” she candidly remarked in a recent interview with People.

Of course, knowing the 28-year-old, we would never have expected the setback to keep her down for long. In fact, quite the reverse was true. Failing to medal in Tokyo actually encouraged Maher to step back and embrace the Olympic experience. The Vermont native knew that falling to the pressures of medaling, media attention and spectator expectations would only inhibit her performance on the field. So she opted to lean into something more gratifying: “All the moments with my teammates, whether I was on the bus ride, in the locker room, at practice, or in the gym,” she explained.

Ilona Maher / Kirby Lee-Imagn Images

This approach was born out of a simple sentiment: “Make it smaller.” For Maher, that meant quieting the outside noise and being more present in the Olympic experience—something that doesn’t come around all too often or for all too many people. “It was important for me to know why I play and that I was playing there for my teammates,” she said. “I wasn’t just playing for the now-millions of people that were watching me, but I was playing for my teammates. I was playing for my program, and that gave me something to really ground myself.”

Of course, we all know the end of this story. Maher and her teammates left France with a little more hardware in their possessions than when they arrived. The newly minted bronze medalists made history for their program—and bought a little redemption in the process. Tokyo may have been a disappointment for Maher and her teammates, but they made up for it just three years later. And the current Dancing With the Stars contestant gleaned more gratification in the process, too. All it took, at the end of the day, was quieting the world’s expectations and leaning into the fun of it all. In other words, all it took was “mak[ing] it smaller.”