Your help helps us to inform the story
In my reporting on girls’s reproductive rights, I’ve witnessed the important position that unbiased journalism performs in defending freedoms and informing the general public.
Your help permits us to maintain these important points within the highlight. With out your assist, we would not be capable of battle for reality and justice.
Each contribution ensures that we are able to proceed to report on the tales that influence lives
Kelly Rissman
US Information Reporter
Seize your popcorn, mud off your dancing footwear and discover your most glittery outfit as a result of Strictly Come Dancing season is right here.
This yr’s competitors is especially particular because the present celebrates its twentieth anniversary. This season additionally ushers in a brand new period for the competitors because it fosters a revamped office tradition following the wave of allegations going through the present in latest months, which have compelled the Strictly crew to incorporate extra welfare measures to help contestants – like using chaperones to handle relations in rehearsal rooms.
In fact, a brand new season additionally means a complete new set of 15 celebrities are about to Rumba, Cha Cha and Waltz throughout our screens each Saturday evening. Amongst them is multi-sport athlete and TV character Montell Douglas, who gained over BBC viewers as Fireplace on the 2024 reboot of Gladiators.
Earlier than her time combating off hopeful Gladiators contestants on our screens, the 38-year-old sprinter represented Nice Britain on the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the place she reached the second spherical within the girls’s 100 metres.
She beforehand held a British lady’s document for quickest 100m dash and gained a Commonwealth Gold within the 4x100m relay race in 2010.
In 2016, Douglas switched her sport and took up the bobsleigh. She excelled shortly within the new discipline, and completed within the high 10 throughout her Bobsleigh World Cup debut in January 2017. By 2018, she was GB’s reserve athlete for the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang.
She took a starring position on the 2022 Olympic video games in Beijing, the place she represented GB alongside Mica McNeill of their two-woman bobsleigh crew and completed in sixth place.
After pivoting from sprinting to bobsleigh, Douglas grew to become the primary feminine UK athlete to compete at each the Summer season and Winter Olympic Video games.
Douglas was raised in Lewisham, south London, earlier than she went on to review sports activities science at college. On the similar time, she laid the foundations of her profitable sports activities profession and made her first main championship look on the 2007 European Athletics Indoor Championships.
Watch Apple TV+ free for 7 days
New subscribers solely. £8.99/mo. after free trial. Plan auto-renews till cancelled
Watch Apple TV+ free for 7 days
New subscribers solely. £8.99/mo. after free trial. Plan auto-renews till cancelled
Her introduction to TV was in 2011 when she appeared on an episode of Who Dares Wins. Then on Gladiators, strategic and fierce gameplay as Fireplace noticed her develop into a fan-favourite character batting off the opposite contestants by wrestling them with an enormous Q-tip or rugby tackling them to the bottom.
Talking about her foray into dancing, Douglas mentioned: “Strictly ARE YOU READY, Fireplace is right here to gentle up the ballroom.”
“Wow I’m so honoured to have been requested to do the present. It’s such a tremendous factor to be part of and I can’t wait to get began. Hopefully just a few of my Gladiator strikes will come in useful with the Tango or Paso Doble!” she mentioned.
