The deaf women’s rugby player turned Gladiator on the BBC

As a former British jiu-jitsu champion and the first deaf female rugby player to play for a senior England side, 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 a revival of the television series Gladiators, the show that pits ordinary people against superhuman athletes in gruelling physical challenges, it was an opportunity the 22-year-old was never going to pass up.

Her MMA-mad father, Phil, had been a contender on the show in the early 2000s and although Ounsley was ecstatic to carry on the Gladiator lineage in her family, there was an even bigger reason for temporarily hanging up her rugby boots.

“I really wanted to get across the message that you can be strong, powerful, aggressive but still be feminine,” she tells Telegraph Sport. “That was something I was very conscious of.”

So off Ounsley went, swapping her scrum-cap, which she wears on the pitch to help hold her cochlear implant in place, for a sponge-clad hard helmet and stepping into the character ‘Fury’ – named in honour of her power and passion for competition.

In the original 1992 series, female Gladiators were kitted out in skimpy crop tops and pants, but the reboot of the series, which airs on the BBC on Saturday evening, has women wearing sports bras and shorts that highlight their athletic and powerful physiques.

“Other female Gladiators might be really feminine from a different sporting background, but I really wanted to be myself and wear what I was comfortable in: a typical sports bra and shorts, similar to what I wear as part of my rugby kit,” says Ounsley, whose appearance on the show reflects the growing commercial opportunities for today’s generation of professional women’s rugby players.

As someone who thrives on physicality, Ounsley relished every second of the experience, filmed over a six-week period at Sheffield’s Utilita Arena.

“The trials were savage,” she says. “There were people from all different sporting backgrounds doing physical, demanding 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.”

Former coal-carrying champion has legion of TikTok followers

Ounsley, who comes from a fitness-crazed family in Wakefield in West Yorkshire – she has followed her father in becoming a coal-carrying world champion – has spent much of her rugby life tackling stereotypes around deafness and now relays that to her impressive legion of TikTok followers.

For rugby, she relies on hand signals to understand the correct calls on the pitch along with lip reading and when she arrived on set for filming last summer, she was completely taken aback.

“It really shocked me how amazing the team were,” she says. “A lot of the crew and even Gladiators had been on a deaf awareness course before filming. People were so willing to support me and it made my experience so much more memorable.”

As a combative wing who has a disarming ability to break tackles, Ounsley’s rugby background shone through as she embarked on the series of strength-based events and obstacle courses.

“The games were very physical and very rugby-related,” Ounsley says. “One of the games was one-v-one tackles. I thought, ‘This is perfect’. That was one of my strongest games. I did pretty well and a lot of people were commenting on it.

‘Our job was to smash them’

“One of the new games is called ‘the ring’. It’s a circle with a button in the middle, with two Gladiators against two contenders. The contenders have to sprint to the middle and try to push this button and the Gladiators’ job was to smash them back.

“It was honestly amazing. It wasn’t touch rugby, it was full-on smashing people with tackles. When I was in the arena, I just switched. It was like going out to play a rugby game. I was in the zone.”

Putting her rugby career on pause meant Ounsley missed the business end of last season, including the Premier 15s (now Premiership Women’s Rugby) final, where 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 massive’,” Ounsley says, recalling the conversation with her head coach. “And she said, ‘We’ll fully support you. You can come back to rugby, we know how hard you work at it’. Even now, she and the team are so excited to watch.”

Ounsley returned to the Chiefs this season, only to dislocate her shoulder in the Allianz Cup. The thought, however, of inspiring other young girls to be fearless, muscular and proud of their differences on one of the country’s most iconic television series has helped her through rehabilitation.

“It’s opened people’s eyes to the fact that I was a Gladiator and a rugby player and hopefully will open people’s eyes to the fact that women and girls do play rugby,” she says. “It’s such a special platform to have.”

It is only a matter of time before this gladiatorial wing is back tearing it up on the pitch.