Sam Quek

On 27 June 2019, ahead of the 2019–20 season, Quek was offered a trial with the Liverpool Ladies FA Women's Super League team by their manager Vicky Jepson.

In August 2019, Quek began writing as a sports columnist for the Daily Mirror newspaper. That same month, she began hosting the BBC's flagship football phone-in programme, 606, with regular pundit Robbie Savage.

On 23 March 2018, Quek was selected to play in an All-Stars team versus FA People's Cup challengers in a 12-hour fundraising match for Sport Relief. Various sporting professionals including former professional footballer, Robbie Savage, former player and manager, Peter Reid, as well as former England cricket captain Michael Vaughan commented about how impressed they were at her footballing ability and how she could make a career in the women's professional game.

In March 2017, Quek appeared as a guest panellist on the ITV sports panel game show Play to the Whistle and BBC's A Question of Sport. She also took part in a celebrity edition of The Chase. She also appeared alongside Greg Rusedski in Series 11 of Pointless Celebrities.

Quek has been a presenter on shows including The NFL Show, The Premier League Show, and Granada Reports In 2017, she became a sports columnist for the Metro newspaper and wrote a piece in 2018 for the BBC about the challenges that women face in the media's portrayal of female athletes on and off the field.

In August 2016, Quek competed in the Rio Olympic Games, winning her 50th cap for Great Britain in the process, taking her to more than 125 combined for both England and GB. The team won the gold medal after beating the Netherlands in the final on penalties, winning the first women's hockey gold medal in the Olympics for Great Britain.

In September 2016, a group of Russian hackers calling themselves "Fancy Bears" hacked into the WADA database and revealed that Quek, along with many of her fellow Team GB members, had been granted a therapeutic use exemption (TUE) for various medical prescriptions. Her TUE specifically related to the use of an inhaler in 2008, when she was a teenager. She responded to the leak, stating that not only had she operated within all sporting guidelines, but that she was primarily concerned that the nature of these hacks could stigmatise the future use of TUEs to the detriment of future athletes, describing TUEs as "potentially life-saving practices". The hacks have since been widely discredited by numerous industry professionals and worldwide media outlets.

In May 2016, Quek appeared with her husband Tom Mairs on BBC One's game show For What It's Worth, where they won the show's jackpot of £2,500.

In November 2016, Quek took part in the sixteenth series of I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here! She made it to the final four before being voted out on the penultimate day and finishing in fourth place.

Quek was also part of the England hockey team who won gold at the European Championships in August 2015 in London. She notably won Man of the Match in the final against the Netherlands, who were reigning world and Olympic champions at the time.

In the absence of Kate Richardson-Walsh and following a vote by her teammates, Quek was made captain of the England team during the 2014 Champions Trophy in Mendoza, Argentina. She played in every game of the tournament despite, unknown to Quek at the time, breaking two ribs on her right side in the opening game.

Quek is married to Tom Mairs, a property entrepreneur who appeared as the titular "Secret Millionaire" on the reality show of the same name in 2010. She is a supporter of Liverpool FC and counts their former striker Ian Rush as one of her sporting heroes. She is also a fan of the Kansas City Chiefs. She was awarded an MBE in the 2017 New Years Honours List for services to hockey.

Quek won her first international cap in 2008 while still studying at university. She was not part of the squad for the London 2012 Olympic Games, but soon became more prominent in the squad and competed for England at the 2013 EuroHockey tournament as well as the 2014 Commonwealth Games,winning silver medals at both events.

Samantha Ann Quek, MBE (born 18 October 1988) is an English former field hockey player. She played as a defender for both the England and Great Britain teams, wearing squad number 13, and won gold as part of the British team at the 2016 Summer Olympics.

Quek was born on 18 October 1988 in Wirral, Merseyside, the daughter of an English mother and Singaporean father. She attended Birkenhead High School in Birkenhead and sixth form at Calday Grange Grammar School in West Kirby before attending Leeds Metropolitan University, where she earned a BSc (Hons) in Sport & Exercise Science.