Sam Quek insists she was very well-behaved in Olympic village after ‘spectacularly awkward’ BBC moment with Team GB boss

Sam Quek was forced to deny that she was involved in any naughty antics at the Olympic village in 2016 during a ‘spectacularly awkward’ moment during BBC One’s Olympics coverage.

The athlete, who won gold for Team GB as part of their field hockey team in Rio, is presenting the BBC’s Olympics Breakfast Show with Dan Walker, and on the first official day of competition, they were joined via video link by Team GB’s chef de mission Mark English, who gave an insight into how the athletes were feeling. 

However, when it came to Dan joking about Sam’s behaviour at the Rio Olympics, things got awkward real quick.

Dan, 44, asked: ‘Was Sam well behaved in the village?’, with Sam, 32, laughing: ‘Always! Don’t ask him about after.’

However, Mark – who is in charge of leading the GB delegation in Tokyo – paused before saying: ‘As you know, social distancing and physical distancing is the order of the day so…’

Sam quickly said: ‘Woah woah woah, I was in a very happy relationship then, Mark’, with her co-host saying: ‘Well this has got spectacularly awkward, Mark.’

Sam laughed off the suggestion (Picture: BBC)

Sam and her field hockey team won gold in 2016 (Picture: Mark Kolbe/Getty Images)

Sam – who was dating Tom Mairs for three years at the time of the 2016 Olympics – turned to the camera and said: ‘Just to assure everybody at home and my dear now-husband, us hockey girls are very well behaved because we compete throughout the whole tournament.’

However, Mark’s claim piqued some viewers’ interest, as Sam later confessed to getting a curious text from a former I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! campmate.

Dan said: ‘The repercussions of our chat about the athletes’ village after you won your gold medal continue. Sam’s already got a text from who?’

‘Carol Vorderman,’ Sam said, ‘who is currently watching, asking what happened at the Olympic village. And I said nothing, because nothing did! I feel terrible because Mark has painted this weird picture of social distancing in the Olympic village.’

Dan laughed: ‘Vorderman is demanding information, but there isn’t any.’

Rio 2016 was dubbed the raunchiest Games ever after it emerged that 350,000 condoms, 100,000 female condoms and 175,000 packets of lubricant were supplied for Rio’s Olympic Village, a figure three times higher than the London 2012 allowance of 150,000 condoms.

However, as Sam said, she was in a committed relationship at the time of the Games, and married businessman Tom in 2018.

The couple welcomed their first child, a daughter named Molly, in March after a ‘traumatic’ C-section following a 27 hour labour.

Tom told OK! magazine: ‘It was quite traumatic getting Molly out, because Sam’s abdominal muscles are so developed they couldn’t cut through them.

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‘It was quite funny, because Sam was measuring quite small and they estimated Molly would be between 5lb and 6lb – but they got her out and the doctor was like, “She’s massive!”

‘They put her on the scales and she was 7lb 14oz. It must have been Sam’s abdominals keeping Molly in.’

Dan and Sam will front the BBC’s morning coverage of Tokyo 2020, with Gabby Logan, Clare Balding, JJ Chalmers, Hazel Irvine, Jason Mohammad, Alex Scott, Jeanette Kwakye and Nihal Arthanayake making up the rest of the Beeb’s presenting team for the Games. 

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