IT might be 2025, but with the shops full of baggy jeans, Oasis preparing to go on tour and, of course, Gladiators dominating Saturday-night TV, you’d be forgiven for thinking we’d gone back to the glory days of the ’90s. Since last January’s BBC reboot of the iconic family show, which originally aired on ITV from 1992 until 2000, Gladiators has become the channel’s biggest entertainment show in years, with around 8 million people tuning in to every episode to watch 16 Lycra-clad muscle mountains putting contenders through the ultimate physical tests (and leaving us wishing we had an oversized cotton bud and the strength to knock someone off a podium).

So, with the show now in its second series, we hang (tough) with Comet, Athena and Sabre to find out what it takes to be the most kick-ass women on TV. Comet, AKA Ella-Mae Rayner, 29, on how grief shaped her, and learning to walk again after that horrific Hang Tough injury. Three episodes into filming Gladiators series one, and Comet feared her TV career was over before it had begun. During a round of the Hang Tough swinging event, a contestant dropped 3.6m on to her, breaking her right ankle and foot in multiple places.

“As soon as the injury happened, I feared I’d be off the show, but the producers were amazing,” she says. “One of the first things they said to me was: ‘You’re not going anywhere. “We just need you to get better, recover, get back on your feet and get stronger.’ So that’s what I did.”. After surgery in June 2023 to stabilise her broken bones with two metal plates and 10 screws, Comet faced seven months of recovery, including learning to walk again.

But by the time filming for series two started last summer, she was ready, albeit petrified of returning to the rings. “I was really nervous, worrying: ‘What if it happens again?’” she says. “When you’ve had trauma and surgery, you’re always aware that you’ve hurt that body part, so it’s about trusting your body again. “But once I did that first run, I was fine.”. It wasn’t the first time Comet had bounced back from the brink.

After quitting gymnastics aged 13, because her 5ft 8in height became a disadvantage, she was inspired to start high-diving by watching Olympian Tom Daley compete. While at university, she did cheerleading at a national level until, in 2017, she shattered her left foot during a tumble and was told she could no longer do the high-impact sports she loved. “I ended up in a bad place. I wouldn’t use the word ‘depressed,’ but it was close. It was a really low point,” says Comet, who has a degree in sports science.

Until then, she had never trained “to lift or look a certain way” but when she began using weights to strengthen herself back on to two feet, she discovered a love for training that led her to qualify as a personal trainer during the pandemic. Taking voluntary redundancy from her job in aviation, she became a fitness influencer and now has a combined TikTok and Instagram following of almost 1 million – a presence that got her noticed by Gladiators.

“It’s a big group friendship,” she says of her show “family”. “We’ve got a big Gladiator group chat, then a separate girls’ chat to discuss things we don’t want the boys involved in, like: ‘What knickers are you wearing under your outfit?’ or discussing who’s on their period that week and feeling bloated. “That’s something people don’t really think about!”. Comet, who has been in a relationship with fitness and PT business entrepreneur James Exton, 36, for the past three years, insists there’s no romance brewing between the other cast members.

“A lot of us have partners and it’s just not that sort of environment. We’re all sporty people and like a family. Giant is the dad of the group, Sabre’s the mum because she’s very wise, and Dynamite is like the little sister that I always wanted,” she says. Comet credits her real-life mum Suzanne, who works as her PA, for helping her get where she is today. She supported Comet and her elder brother Max, 31, through their grief after their dad Stuart died at the age of 44 in October 2009. Ella-Mae was just 14.

“Dad was unwell and it was out of the blue, a shock. It was tough,” she says. “Nothing had ever hit that deep in my life, so that was rock bottom, but I genuinely think that made me the toughest. “I had counselling, but Mum guided me and my brother through the whole thing and always gave us everything. “She sacrificed her whole life for us. “I think that’s why I am so driven today.”. From bullied schoolgirl to powerlifting champion, there’s no stopping Athena, AKA Karenjeet Kaur Bains, 28.