Listen up, besties, mother has spoken again. Olympic rugby player (and everyone’s favorite TikTok follow) Ilona Maher was honored at the 2025 ESPYs with the Best Breakthrough Athlete of the year award, and her speech knocked it out of the park.
Maher was nominated for the award alongside MLB baseball player Paul Skenes, college lacrosse player Chloe Humphrey, and college basketball player Cooper Flagg. At the July 16 award ceremony in Los Angeles, actor Anthony Ramos and three-time Olympic gold medalist Gabby Thomas announced Maher as the winner. Upon hearing her name, Maher jumped up and let out a triumphant cheer, giving a cute pageant-girl wave as she walked up to the stage to receive her award.
In true Maher fashion, she opened her acceptance speech with a joke, referencing the way she prepared her speech. “I did it the old-fashioned way, wrote it down on a piece of paper — loser,” she said self-deprecatingly. She followed that up with another zinger, referencing the fact that the award is typically meant for newcomers to the sports world: “It’s taken me seven years and two Olympics but I finally broke through. Amazing stuff.”
But then she got more serious, using her speech to thank her family and agent, giving a special shoutout to her teammates. “I know it’s just me up here, but I’m a team sport athlete through and through, and my teammates are the reason I am the way I am,” she said. “I love them so much. They truly are the reason I am up here on this stage.
And from there came the heart of her speech: My message stays the same: Strong is beautiful. Strong is powerful. Sexy is whatever you want it to be and I hope more girls can feel how I feel,” she said.
She went on to speak about growing up as an athlete. “Sport does amazing things for a girl who didn’t understand why her body looked the way it did. Sport gave me an outlet and showed me how capable I can be.”
And finally, she ended the speech with a call to action for other athletes: “Take up space. Pitch it faster. Run harder. Put another plate on the bar. And never tone it down.”
Maher’s message of self-love and promoting strength — especially for her audience of young women — is very likely a huge reason she won this breakthrough athlete award in the first place. She rose to popularity amid the 2024 Paris Olympics (though, as she mentioned, she’s been crushing it as a rugby player for years now), and quickly made a household name for herself for posting funny, relatable content and promoting self-love. So, while her ESPYs speech is an extremely important message for her fans to hear, it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that it’s what she’d choose to speak about during such a big moment in her career.
But! That’s not all Maher took the time to promote — she also made sure to call attention to the sport that got her where she is. “PSA: There is a women’s rugby world cup this year,” she said during her speech, referring to the biggest event in women’s rugby, which starts Aug. 22. “Probably a lot of you didn’t know. The biggest event in women’s rugby, starting in about a month. “Watch it, tune in — you’re not going to understand the first time you watch it. You’re not going to understand the second time either, but just keep watching, OK?”