Olympian Ilona Maher has big plans to share her story with fans in a new way.
During the Tuesday, May 20, episode of her “House of Maher” podcast, the athlete, 28, praised how guest Mamrie Hart took a “really fun” approach to writing her books, You Deserve a Drink and I’ve Got This Round. (The YouTuber also has a cookbook titled All I Think About Is Food, which was released last month.)
“I’m trying to write a memoir of my own,” Maher revealed. “So it was almost, like, a good way to learn from you and how you put yourself in it.”
Maher further hinted that she’s been working on putting together a book “for a while,” explaining, “In 2022, I was like, ‘I don’t have anything to write about. What am I gonna write about?’ And then one day, I opened up a Cutwater … I was at home and I just started typing and realized you have so much more to say than you realize sometimes.”
Hart teased, “I think it was Hemingway who said, ‘Write drunk, edit sober,'” which Maher confirmed is how she got started.
“There’s so many little fun stories to share,” the rugby star continued. “So it’s been really cool to write and cathartic, in a way.”
According to her sister and cohost Olivia Maher, there’s more layers to Ilona than her sports persona shows. “I remember after you read [Mamrie’s books], you were like, ‘This is what I kind of want my book to feel like,'” Olivia (known online for creating the “girl dinner” trend) said on Tuesday. “Like, ‘I want it to be my personal anecdotes.’ It doesn’t need to be, like, sports and the grind and the rise, it’s also where you’ve made mistakes and you’ve gotten better or you’ve learned and the relationship you come from.”
While Ilona became more of a household name during the 2024 Olympics in Paris — where she helped the U.S. women’s rugby team win its first-ever Olympic medal — she was already a trendsetter in the sport. She previously made her Olympic debut in 2021 at the Tokyo Games and is a vocal advocate for topics like body image and inclusion both on and off the field. Ilona has also used her trademark red lipstick to send an important message.
“It doesn’t take away from your athletic ability if you wear makeup,” she told CBS Mornings last summer. “If you want to put on a full face of makeup to go tackle people, good on you if you’re doing it. So for me, it was almost like a ‘stick it to the man’ type [of thing]. … You don’t have to sacrifice your femininity to play any sport.”
Following her Olympic success, Ilona traded her cleats for heels on season 33 of Dancing With the Stars, finishing in second place with pro partner Alan Bersten. When asked to compare the two experiences, Ilona didn’t hesitate to tell Us which was more challenging.
“I feel like they’re hyping up Dancing With the Stars,” she shared in an exclusive interview in December 2024. “It was very hard. It was extremely hard. Mentally very hard for me, but in a different way. I think there was just different pressure levels. … This was about me dancing, looking pretty on the screen and dancing for people. It was very hard, but I think I put more pressure on it maybe than it had to be.”
She explained, “With the Olympics, this wasn’t just for myself. The Olympics was to get a medal for my team, to get a medal for our program so we could continue having a program so young girls could dream about being an Olympian and playing rugby in the U.S. So that’s pressure.”
