by As a former British jiu-jitsu champion and the first deaf female rugby player to play for England’s senior team, Exeter Chiefs wing Jodie Ounsley is used to stepping out of her comfort zone.
So when she was offered the chance to take part in the revival of the TV series Gladiators, the show that pits ordinary people against superhuman athletes as they take on grueling physical challenges, the 22-year-old was an opportunity she couldn’t resist. -it would go away.
Her MMA-mad father Phil was a competitor on the show in the early 2000s and while Ounsley was excited to continue the Gladiator lineage in her family, there was even more reason to hang up her rugby boots temporarily.
“I really wanted to convey the message that you can be strong, powerful, aggressive but still be feminine,” she tells Telegraph Sport. “That was something I was very familiar with.”
So Ounsley went, swapping her scrum cap, which she wears on the field to help keep her cochlear implant in place, for a sponge-covered hard helmet and stepped into character ‘Fury’ – named in honor of her power and her passion for competition.
In the original 1992 series, the female Gladiators were equipped with skimpy tops and trousers, but the reboot of the series, which airs on the BBC on Saturday evenings, has women wearing sports bras and shorts that emphasize their athletic and powerful physiques. .
“Other female Gladiators might be very feminine from a different sporting background, but I wanted to really be myself and wear what I was comfortable in: a normal sports bra and shorts, like the size which I wear as part of my rugby kit,” says Ounsley, whose appearance on the show highlights the growing commercial opportunities for today’s generation of professional women’s rugby players.
As someone who thrives on physicality, Ounsley enjoyed every second of the experience, which was filmed over a six-week period at Sheffield’s Utilita Arena.
“The trials were brutal,” she says. “People from all different sporting backgrounds were doing tough physical tests. It was about finding the best personality that stood out, who was physically strong and powerful. All these elements came together and I got the opportunity, which was crazy and surreal.”
The former coal carrier champion has a legion of TikTok followers
Ounsley, who comes from a fitness-obsessed family in Wakefield in West Yorkshire – who followed her father into becoming a world champion coal-carrier – has spent much of her rugby life challenging stereotypes about deafness and she that’s on to his impressive Legion of TikTok Followers.
When it comes to rugby, she relies on hand signals to understand the right calls on the field as well as lip reading and when she arrived on set for filming last summer, she was quite surprised.
“I was really surprised at how amazing the team was,” she says. “Many of the crew and even Gladiators were on a deaf awareness course before filming. People were so willing to support me and it made my experience that much more memorable.”
A winger with a disarming ability to break tackles, Ounsley’s rugby background shone through as she took on a series of strength-based events and obstacle courses.
“The games were very physical and very rugby related,” says Ounsley. “One of the games was one-on-one tackles. I thought, ‘This is perfect’. That was one of my strongest games. I did well and a lot of people were commenting on it.
‘Our job was to break them’
“One of the new games is called the ring. It is a circle with a button in the middle, with two Gladiators against two competitors. The contestants have to sprint to the center and try to push this button and it was the Gladiators job to break them back.
“He was very honest. It wasn’t touch rugby, it was full of tacklers. When I was in the field, I just changed. It was like going out to play a game of rugby. I was in the zone.”
When her rugby career was put on hold Ounsley meant the end of last season’s business, including the Premier 15s (now Women’s Rugby Premiership) when the Chiefs were edged out by Gloucester-Hartpury.
But she still had the full blessing of her head coach, Susie Appleby, a former England international who was runner-up on the BBC TV documentary SAS: Are You Tough Enough?
“I was so honest with her. I said, ‘I appreciate this is huge’,” Ounsley says, recalling the conversation with her head coach. “And she said, ‘We will fully support you. You can go back to rugby, we know how hard you work at it’. Even now, she and the team are excited to watch it.”
Ounsley returned to the Chiefs this season, only to dislocate her shoulder in the Allianz Cup. The idea, however, helped inspire other young girls to be fearless, muscular and proud of their differences on one of the country’s most iconic TV series to rehabilitate.
“It opened people’s eyes to the fact that I was a Gladiator and a rugby player and I hope it opens people’s eyes to the fact that women and girls play rugby,” she says. “It’s such a special platform to have.”
It’s only a matter of time before this gladiatorial wing is back tearing it up on the field.
