Sam Quek was the final celebrity revealed to be joining this year’s Strictly Come Dancing celebrity line-up.
Quek was announced to participate on the 2024 run of the BBC dancing competition in August on an episode of The One Show. “I am so relieved it is out there now it has been hard to keep a secret!” she said. “The rumours were spreading and I had to lie!”
Quek is an Olympic hockey champion, having won a gold medal with team Great Britain at the 2016 Rio Olympics. The athlete has won 125 international caps for the England and GB women’s hockey teams, winning her first against Argentina in 2007 aged just 19 while still studying sports and exercise science at Leeds Metropolitan University.
The athlete’s hockey career hasn’t always been plain sailing. After failing to be selected for multiple Olympic teams and breaking two ribs in 2014, she considered leaving the sport.
“In June 2015, I seriously considered hanging up my stick and walking away,” she previously told The Guardian. “I missed out on Beijing and London and watched all the games from the stands. I remember post-2012 saying I never wanted to experience that feeling again. Words can’t describe how painful it was to sit there.”
The hockey player retired after winning gold at the 2016 Rio Olympics and, three months later, appeared on the 16th series of I’m A Celebrity…Get Me out of Here! Having battled terrifying trials and rodent-infested challenges, Quek came fourth in the competition with Gogglebox star Scarlett Moffatt coming in first place.
Following I’m A Celeb, Quek continued to seek out other broadcast opportunities, telling The Guardian she wanted to “become like Gabby Logan or Clare Balding” on the small screen.
The athlete turned broadcaster subsequently appeared on the ITV sports panel game show Play to the Whistle, the celebrity edition of The Chase and Pointless Celebrities before being announced as a team captain on Question of Sport in 2021.
The same year Quek landed her “dream job” she welcomed her first child, a daughter called Molly, with her husband Tom.
A year later, the hockey player became pregnant with her second child, Isaac, and was rushed to hospital for an emergency C-section after heavy bleeding. The presenter returned to work just two months later.
Quek told New! magazine at the time: “I get a lot of mum guilt. They’re only young for so long. I look back at photos, especially of Isaac, and I can’t remember the first two months, and then I went back to work eight weeks after giving birth to him.”
Ahead of Strictly Come Dancing training, Quek – who befriended the former Strictly pro Ola Jordan while in the I’m A Celeb jungle – revealed she and her husband had been taking dance lessons to stay active.
Speaking to HELLO! she said: “I got to know Ola and James [Jordan] over in Australia so they gave us the dancing bug. It’s a good thing for us to get out and get more active rather than socialising on the sofa, so we’re going to start taking classes [around] the corner.”
Though, ahead of her Strictly appearance, Quek said she’s learnt most of her moves from her friends. “I am used to dancing on a girls night out but I will give it my all,” she said.
“I hope to get to Blackpool!”
