Hockey career Quek played as a defender and went on to represent both the
England and
Great Britain teams, wearing squad number 13. She won gold as part of the Great Britain Team for the
2007 Australian Youth Olympic Festival. She was also part of the team that were runners-up to Germany at the 2006
Women's EuroHockey Junior Championship. She won her first Great Britain international cap, aged 19 and whilst still at university, featuring in a goalless draw against
Argentina 2007. She made her
England debut the following year. She was not selected for the Great Britain squad for the London 2012 Olympic Games, but did play for England at the
2013 Women's EuroHockey Nations Championship, and at the
2014 Commonwealth Games where the team won silver. In the absence of
Kate Richardson-Walsh, Quek captained 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 their opening game. Quek was also part of the England hockey team who won gold at the
European Championships in August 2015 in London. She won Player of the Match in the final against the
Netherlands, who were reigning world and Olympic champions at the time. In August 2016, Quek competed in the
Rio Olympic Games. In the group stage, the team won all five of their matches, defeating
Australia 2–1,
India 3–0,
Argentina 3–2,
Japan 2–0 and the
United States 2–1. A 3–1 quarter-final win over
Spain and a 3–0 defeat of
New Zealand saw Great Britain reach the final. The team defeated the Netherlands on penalties after a 3–3 draw, winning the first women's hockey gold medal in the Olympics for Great Britain. Quek won her 50th cap for Great Britain during the competition, taking her to more than 125 combined for both England and 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.
Potential football career Quek was signed to
Tranmere Rovers F.C. as a junior. She revealed in an interview with
The Guardian that she had to make the choice at the age of 16 between pursuing a professional career in hockey or
football, as splitting her time between the two sports was hindering her progress in both. She elected to pursue a career in hockey. 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. She was offered a trial with the
Liverpool Ladies FA Women's Super League team by their manager
Vicky Jepson, but had not taken the offer up as of April 2020.
Media appearances and current work 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. A few months later, in November, she 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. She also took part in a celebrity edition of The Chase, and appeared alongside Greg Rusedski in Series 11 of Pointless Celebrities''. Quek has been a presenter on sports shows, including for
The NFL Show, rugby union on
Channel 5, field hockey on
BT Sport, and football for
Channel 4 and
LFC TV. and in 2018 wrote a piece for the BBC about the challenges that women face in the media's portrayal of female athletes on and off the field. She also became a weekly sport columnist for the
Daily Mirror newspaper. In August 2019, she began hosting the BBC's flagship football phone-in programme,
606, with regular pundit
Robbie Savage. In 2020, she competed in
Celebrity Masterchef, finishing as a losing finalist. In July 2021, it was confirmed that Quek would become a team captain on the long-running show
Question of Sport. Her appointment was part of a change to the programme's line-up that saw
Paddy McGuinness take over as host and Quek become the show's first permanent female captain alongside former rugby union player
Ugo Monye. In July and August 2021, Quek was also co-anchor of BBC's Olympic Breakfast morning programme, covering the
Tokyo Olympic Games alongside
Dan Walker. In November 2021, just seven days after giving birth to her daughter, Quek recorded an episode of
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and won £16,000 for
WellChild, which made her the most successful contestant of the Celebrity Special edition, which also featured
Harry Redknapp and
Craig Charles. In January 2022, Quek started hosting the
BBC One show
Morning Live with
Gethin Jones. In February 2023, Quek was chosen to co-host the opening ceremony of the
Eurovision Song Contest 2023 in Liverpool together with Ukrainian Eurovision commentator and
2017 contest co-presenter
Timur Miroshnychenko. In October 2023, Quek appeared as a contestant on ''
Richard Osman's House of Games''. In June 2024, Quek released a children's nonfiction book, Roar: A celebration of Great Sporting Women, published by Allen & Unwin. In August 2024, it was announced that Quek would be a contestant on the
twenty-second series of Strictly Come Dancing.{{Cite web|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/2024/strictly-come-dancing-sam-quek-mbe|title=Sam Quek MBE is the fifteenth celebrity contestant confirmed for Strictly Come Dancing 2024 ==Personal life==