How the US women’s rugby team capped off a great Olympics with a bronze medal
SAINT-DENIS, France — It turns out that amid all the emotional medal ceremonies, with flags hoisted from the rafters and the winner’s national anthem blaring from the speakers, there are other ways to win the Olympics.
The old familiar Olympic first-week players like gymnastics and swimming are already producing and reproducing their usual cast of celebrities. Characters like Simone Biles and French swimmer Léon Marchand, the human dolphin who will soon be on the cover of many a French magazine, are given plenty of airtime.
Léon and Simone: We’d like to introduce you to Ilona Maher, a 27-year-old from Vermont who attended Quinnipiac University in Connecticut before joining the U.S. rugby sevens team. If you haven’t already bumped into each other in the dining room of the Olympic Village, or clicked on the viral videos she pumps out to nearly two million followers on TikTok and Instagram, we’d love to introduce you to Ilona Maher, a 27-year-old from Vermont who attended Quinnipiac University in Connecticut before joining the U.S. rugby sevens team.
Now she also has a little piece of hardware.
Maher and her teammates from the Eagles, as they are known, had a field day at the Stade de France on Tuesday. With a 90-yard run as the clock ticked down, Utah’s Alex Sedrick snatched the bronze medal from a heavily favored Australian team and gave America its first Olympic medal in rugby sevens.
A FINISH YOU HAVE TO SEE TO BELIEVE! 😱
ALEX SEDRICK LEADS TEAM USA TO UNITED STATES’ FIRST OLYMPIC RUGBY SEVENS MEDAL IN FINAL MATCH! 🥉 #Olympic Games in Paris photo.twitter.com/1FMu9SWxDo
— NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) July 30, 2024
Just a minute earlier, all seemed lost for the Eagles as the Australians pushed the pill over the tryline to turn a 7-7 draw into a 12-7 lead. Then the green-and-golds trapped the Americans deep in their own end and crawled back as the final seconds ticked away.
But then Sedrick got possession in the middle of the field, broke through two tackles and exploded into the open field. In the blink of an eye, Sedrick was off on a 90-yard dash across the turf that ended with her running through the uprights. When she converted the kick to break the tie with no time left, the Eagles were 14-12 winners. The players on the field dropped to their knees as the bench emptied in an all-out sprint to pounce on them.
It was the sweetest of turns for the U.S. women. After beating Great Britain, a true rugby nation, in the quarterfinals on Monday night, the Eagles suffered a rather one-sided 24-12 semifinal defeat to New Zealand, the queens of the sport and eventual gold medalists.
“It’s so hard,” Maher said as sweat, tears or maybe both streamed down her face shortly after the match ended. “But fighting for bronze is going to be amazing.”
The Eagles then spent much of the bronze medal match chasing the Aussies and the pill. But in rugby sevens, a game with just 14 players on a huge field, anything can happen. In the dying seconds, Sedrick made it happen.
The medal is a huge boon for the small but passionate American rugby fan base, but it will also provide a huge boost to the fortunes of Maher and her teammates.
Maher came to Paris with much more to show for her work: a sizeable social media following for an athlete in a sport that barely impresses American sports fans.
But both Maher and the sport’s profiles have exploded over the past week. Every time she posts a new TikTok video — in which she tries out those cardboard beds in the village, hangs out with Jason Kelce and Snoop Dogg, shows off the red, white and blue Polo sports dress (and complains about how it forces her to get naked in public restrooms when she has to pee) — the clicks pour in.
The numbers are ridiculous: 1.7 million, 3.8 million, 5 million, and so on.
Apart from the explosions on social media, rugby sevens is one of the biggest surprises of these Olympic Games, not least because rugby is one of the most popular sports in France.
Almost every day and night, even before the opening ceremony, the image of a full Stade de France appeared on a television screen. Almost everyone who wasn’t there had a healthy dose of FOMO, especially after France won the men’s tournament on Saturday.
With nearly 80,000 fans filling the country’s national stadium for a sport that barely registered in Rio and Tokyo, rugby sevens was the place to be. When the French played, the building vibrated with one rendition after another of La Marseillaise, the host nation’s national anthem. Alongside Kelce, Jamaican sprint champion Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce was also there. Hip-hop legend Flavor Flav was in the house for Tuesday’s medal matches.
The games are so fast, seven-minute halves, over and out in 20 minutes, including half-time. They are full of wide-open runs, hard-hitting open-field tackles and wild lead changes.
“I think it looks like cruelty, but I like cruelty,” said Portia Woodman-Wickliffe, a veteran Kiwis player.
About that audacity. Just look at Maher’s camera-ready stiff-arm from earlier this week, which apparently Baltimore Ravens running back Derrick Henry impressedShe knew what was at stake heading into the Americans’ final match and she has a gift for putting it into words.
Pass the ball to Ilona Maher and GET OUT OF THE WAY‼️ #Olympic Games in Paris
📺CNBC and Peacock photo.twitter.com/hF8KAytAj1
— On her turf (@OnHerTurf) July 28, 2024
“You can leave empty-handed or very happy,” she said, inserting a second, unprintable adverb into the second half of the sentence.
Sedrick, 26, made sure it was the latter.
“I was so sweaty, I think their hands just slipped off me,” she said of the two Australians who nearly wrapped her up.
Maher said she was ready to give her firstborn child to Sedrick. She entered the Olympics as a niche social media phenomenon, and as her profile grew, so did the pressure.
“I wanted to show people that I was good at social media, but I was also good at rugby,” she said.
For her and the rest of the Eagles, their work here is done.
Required reading
(Photo: Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)
