Maddison Levi has been an unstoppable force at the Paris Olympics, scoring a record-breaking 14 tries as her Australian team finished fourth in the competition.

Here’s everything you need to know about a Sevens star who’s also an accomplished AFL player.

10 things you should know about Maddison Levi

1. Maddison Levi was born on 27 April 2002. She was brought up in Gold Coast and attended Queensland’s Miami State High School, where she was placed on the school’s sevens excellence programme. She went on to be named player of the tournament in the U17 Youth Rugby Sevens National Championships.

2. She’s a natural athlete, who also excelled at Australian Rules Football. She first played Aussie rules in 2018 because her school team was short on numbers, and within a year she was selected for the U18 AFL Women’s Queensland State Academy. Then, in 2020, she rejected a contract from Rugby Australia to focus on the rival code.

3. Levi set AFLW (AFL Women’s) draft records in the 20-metre sprint and the vertical jump. She was subsequently selected by hometown team Gold Coast Suns with the 50th pick of the 2020 AFLW draft.

4. A clause in Levi’s Suns contract allowed her to return to rugby in emphatic fashion in 2021, just in time for the Tokyo Olympics. Levi scored three tries, but defending champions Australia could only finish fifth after being knocked out by Fiji in the quarter-finals.

5. She made her World Sevens Series debut in Dubai at the start of the 2021-22 campaign. Her first season would end in glory, with victory in the Rugby World Cup Sevens in South Africa. She scored a hat-trick in the final against the Black Ferns.

6. Levi was also part of the team that took Commonwealth gold at the Birmingham Games in 2022, scoring 10 tries on the way to the title.

7. She’s the fastest Australian woman ever to score 100 tries in the World Sevens series, a feat she described as “insane”.

8. Her record-breaking form continued into Paris 2024, where her 14 tries over the three days of the Olympics Rugby Sevens 2024 are the best ever figures in the tournament’s history.

9. She’s “a little bit superstitious”. “If I listen to, say, three songs before we play game one and we win, then I listen to those three songs before the next game,” she told Body+Soul.

10. Maddison’s younger sister, Teagan, also plays for Australia, and was a member of the Sevens squad at Paris 2024. Their father, Jason, flew out to France to watch his daughters at the Olympics.

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