Olympian Ilona Maher knows how to have fun in Paris.
On Saturday, August 3, the Team USA women’s rugby player and viral TikTok sensation, 27, took some time out of her Summer Olympics schedule to try one of the local delicacies: the giant croissant.
In a video posted on her TikTok, which has more than 2 million followers, Maher sat at an outdoor table wearing a Team USA T-shirt and her Olympic bronze medal while holding the French treat in both hands.
“A light bite,” she captioned the clip, which shows her biting into a large piece of croissant. The rugby star then chewed and let out a satisfied “mmmm” before going for another bite.
“Just a little treat. Just something to get me going,” she said in the video.
Snoop Dogg and Cookie Monster surprise Martha Stewart with a special cake for her 83rd birthday at the Paris Olympics
Maher helped the USA rugby sevens team win bronze in Paris, the first time the team has won an Olympic medal. At the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, Maher was part of the team that finished 6th.
Maher’s giant croissant video is the latest Olympic food-centric content to go viral on TikTok, following Henrik Christiansen’s “Olympic Muffin Man” video of chocolate muffins from the Olympic Village, as well as videos of Snoop Dogg and Cookie Monster surprising Martha Stewart with a cone-shaped cake macarons for her 83rd birthday. The rugby star — who grew up in Vermont and then played rugby at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut — continues to draw attention to her sport. At this year’s Olympics, she even got a recently retired NFL star to publicly declare his admiration for the USA rugby sevens team.
In a viral TikTok posted in July, Maher approached Jason Kelce, a 36-year-old Philadelphia Eagles tight end, to see if he was a fan.
Jason Kelce wears beret for ESPN debut, says he’s ‘still on Paris time’ after attending 2024 Olympics
“Women’s water polo has Flavor Flav as their superfan,” she told Kelce as she tried to get him to become a superfan of her team. “You are the girl’s dad. Do you get anything out of being our superfan? Not. No prize, no money, no benefits, I don’t think I can give you free stuff.”
“You are an excellent salesman. I’m officially a fan of women’s rugby, the Olympics,” Kelce responded, and Maher quickly replied, “We’ve got Jason Kelce!”
True to his word, Kelce ended up wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with Maher’s face in the bronze medal team match.
Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up to date with the best PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
Maher’s other viral TikToks from the Olympics include her exchanging custom pins with gymnastics star Simone Biles, her playful attempt to connect with tennis star Coco Gauff by saying she once played pickleball, and her attempt to cool off when the temperatures soared in Paris.
Olympians find condoms in their bedrooms in Olympic village: ‘You don’t have to be a gold medalist to wear one’
“It’s very unusual,” Maher explained to PEOPLE in an exclusive interview. “It’s kind of like my teammates say I tell my jokes twice — once to them and then once to the world, so it’s just a riff. Whatever I am online is how I am in real life.”
To find out more about all the Olympic and Paralympic hopefuls, come to people.com and check out the live coverage before, during and after the games. And sign up for Going for Gold, our Olympic newsletter, to receive the biggest stories from the Games straight to your inbox. Watch the Paris Olympics and Paralympics starting July 26 on NBC and Peacock.
Categories: Trends
Source: HIS Education