TIME names Diana Flores among sports’ 100 most influential for 2026

TIME named Diana Flores among the 100 Most Influential People in Sports for 2026, elevating the Mexico City native at the center of flag football’s rise from niche competition to Olympic sport. The honor lands as the game moves toward its Los Angeles 2028 debut, with Flores already one of its most visible faces.

TIME’s profile traced Flores’s path from picking up the sport at age 8 to making Mexico’s national team by 16, a rapid climb that helped turn her into the sport’s clearest global reference point. That profile also framed her as one of the key figures who helped flag football reach the Olympic stage, and NFL executive vice president Troy Vincent has pointed to her leadership in pushing the game forward.

Flores is captain and quarterback of the Mexico Women’s National Flag Football Team, which won gold at The World Games 2022. In the same year, the NFL and the International Federation of American Football named her a Global Flag Football Ambassador as they worked to expand the sport internationally. The NFL has also described her as the first flag football player, female or male, to have artifacts recognized by the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Her reach has extended well beyond tournament fields. Flores appeared in the NFL’s Super Bowl LVII commercial centered on flag football and later worked as an AFC offensive coordinator at the Pro Bowl Games, giving the sport a presence in two of football’s most watched showcases. That visibility has mattered as the Olympic movement has embraced the game: the International Olympic Committee officially added flag football to the Los Angeles 2028 program on Oct. 16, 2023, in Mumbai, India, alongside baseball and softball, cricket, lacrosse and squash.

The timing is significant because the sport is already broad in scale. Olympics.com says more than 20 million people in more than 100 countries play flag football, a footprint that helps explain why Flores’s profile resonates far beyond Mexico. Olympics.com also highlighted her in 2025 as one of the most recognizable faces in the sport, while other women including Nausicaa Dell’Orto, Mona Stevens and Kodie Fuller have been cited as pioneers of its international growth. Flores now stands as the athlete most closely associated with flag football’s move from grassroots momentum to Olympic legitimacy.