This episode of Red Tent Storytellers begins high in the mountains of Bolivia and stretches across Olympic stadiums, Islamic republics, hidden women’s spaces, and the growing global battle over truth itself. Hosted by Peeja and Hazel Moon Audio, this conversation with Coach Linda Blade is not simply about sport. It is about what happens when a woman spends an entire lifetime refusing to shrink herself to fit the expectations around her. Linda Blade was born in Bolivia to Canadian missionary parents translating the Bible into Quechua. Long before she became an internationally recognized advocate for women’s sports, she was a fiercely athletic little girl sprinting through mountain roads, training in secret corners of South America, and becoming a national champion before most teenagers know who they are. What follows is extraordinary. Linda recounts training under a world-class German coach in Bolivia before earning NCAA recruitment offers, competing internationally for Canada, and witnessing firsthand the corruption and doping scandals that defined elite athletics in the 1980s. But the episode reaches another level when she describes the moment World Athletics sent her into post-revolution Iran as the first Western woman invited to teach women how to coach girls in sport. What she found there changed her permanently. Women hidden beneath black chadors suddenly exploding into color inside female-only athletic spaces. Former champions showing her photo albums with parts of their bodies ripped from the images by family members. Quiet confessions about freedom, fear, ambition, and survival. Linda describes the experience not as abstract politics, but as a visceral warning about how quickly women’s rights can disappear when ideology overtakes reality. What makes this conversation unforgettable is Linda herself. She speaks with the intensity of someone who has lived many lives already, but also with deep optimism about human potential. For Linda, sport was never simply competition. It was proof that excellence exists, that truth matters, and that women deserve spaces where they can fully become who they are without apology. This episode is not merely a life story. It is a warning. And it is a defense of freedom from someone who has watched entire societies lose it in real time. Linda is a former Canadian national heptathlon champion, international athletics coach, researcher, and advocate for women’s sports. Her career has taken her from Bolivia to Nigeria, Iran, Kenya, Europe, India, and beyond through decades of coaching, teaching, and international athletics development work. She has coached Olympic-level athletes, worked with World Athletics development programs, and became one of the leading public voices defending sex-based categories in sport. She is also co-author of Unsporting, a landmark book examining gender ideology and fairness in women’s athletics. Her work combines elite athletic expertise with firsthand global experience witnessing how ideology, culture, and politics shape the lives of women across radically different societies. Follow Dr. Blade on XUnsporting: How Trans Activism and Science Denial are Destroying SportSports Illustrated, '97 | Teach coaching, see the world traveling to third world countries to train coaches is Linda blade's idea of a perfect summer vacationLooking for a way to support Canadian TERVEN? Unsure who what where when how and why? Support the BIGGEST ongoing charter challenge in Canada by donating to:@cawsbar: https://cawsbar.ca/donations@JCCFCanada: https://jccf.ca/donate/Join The Red Tent Collective The conversations happening here matter because women’s voices matter. If you’re tired of being told to stay quiet, stay agreeable, or stay small, you are not alone. Join a growing network of women committed to truth, reality, storytelling, freedom, and unapologetic conversation. Become part of The Red Tent Collective and help build the spaces women were told they no longer deserve.
