‘I’m a Celebrity kept hockey in the public eye’

A year after her gold medal, Sam Quek tells Daniel Schofield about ending up in reality TV

For most athletes an Olympic gold medal is the end point. All the hard work, low wages and sacrifices led to the top of the podium. For others, however, the gold medal can act as a springboard. That is the attitude that Sam Quek took after Great Britain’s women won their first Olympic hockey gold medal a year ago today by beating the Netherlands in a final that enthralled the nation. One of the defining images of that dramatic shoot-out victory was of Quek leading the charge of her celebrating team-mates, arms outstretched, eyes bulging, after Hollie Webb scored the decisive penalty.

Quek had always planned to take six months off after Rio. So while her teammates took up new careers and contracts, she was able to capitalise on hockey’s golden glow. She finished fourth on I’m a Celebrity…get Me Out Of Here, fronted a sportswear campaign for Littlewoods and has worked as a pundit on sports including football, horse racing and NFL.

Indeed the 28-yearold has only started training again this month with Bowdon Hightown, her club side, which came as a significant shock to the system. “It was strange,” Quek told The Daily Telegraph. “I was expecting to be in the same shape and have the same ability that I did at the Olympics. It was a case of I knew what I wanted to do with the ball but the connection was just not there with the hands. It was like being a beginner again. The stiffness and soreness was just unreal. Hockey hits muscles that you don’t realise you have.”

Quek has maintained fleeting contact with many of her Rio team-mates. The last time they were all in the same room together was last December at the Golden Hockey Ball on the day she landed back from the jungle. I asked whether her foray into the world of television had the potential to create tension with her teammates. “If I am being honest I think some of them were pleased for me, a couple might have been gutted that it wasn’t them,” she said. “It was a mixed bag.”

Quek makes no apology for pursuing this route. Being a professional hockey player is a finite, not particularly well-paid career. Central contracts are worth around £15,000, barely enough to live on, let alone retire from. However, Quek is also at pains to argue that she was not just doing this for the money but for the sport as a whole. “I like to think that I wasn’t doing it just for myself but to keep hockey out there in the public eye,” Quek said. “Hopefully that will have a knock-on effect with more interest and sponsors coming to the sport.”

Nor did the offers just pile up at her door. She

had to work for them. In her first six weeks, her first cheque came to £32 once her travel expenses were deducted. “I was lucky but I had to stick my neck out, I had to invest my own money,” Quek said.

The big break came when the producers of I’m a Celebrity invited her to an interview. After three weeks of radio silence, she thought no more of it until the offer came to eat grubs alongside Carol Vorderman and Scarlett Moffatt. That left Quek with a choice about how she was going to present herself on screen.

“I just thought I am going to be myself, there’s no one else you can be,” she said. “I wanted to go in there as a strong, athletic woman and show how tough they can be. I wanted to represent hockey players, I wanted to represent sporty women.

“I did have pressures going in. Some people said you may want to put chicken fillets in your bikini, get a fake tan and fake eyelashes. I did nearly cave to the pressure. Then I thought I can’t because if I don’t go in there being real then how can I expect youngsters, especially young girls, to want to look up to me and want to become a hockey player?”

Her elevated profile has led to other opportunities, notably becoming a presenter for Liverpool FC TV and working alongside Clare Balding, one of her role models, at the European Football Championships. Still Quek is not fully comfortable with the “C” word.

“I prefer to see myself as a role model that young girls can look up to,” Quek said. “I still go to Tesco in my trackies, I will go outside without make-up, I would never ring anyone up saying ‘do you know who I am?’”

The long-term goal is to become a full-time sports presenter in the mould of Balding. Short-term is less clear. The World Cup is on home soil next year. Such is the demand for tickets that England Hockey is having to run a ticket ballot. Also on the horizon is the possibility of defending their Olympic crown in Tokyo.

“I will get to Christmas and see where my body is at,” Quek said. “I also need to see where my mind is at. If I am truly loving hockey of course I will push as hard as I can for one of those places for 2018. If I am not then I could well prioritise other challenges.”

The 2018 Hockey Women’s World Cup takes place in London on Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, and a public ticket ballot is open now at eng.hockey/worldcupballot