Recording of Event with April Hutchinson & Linda Blade
Two Incredible women advocating for safety and fairness for female athletes!
In case you missed it, we just wanted to share the recording from our April event with April Hutchinson & Linda Blade. These remarkable women are advocating for safety and fairness for female athletes. They are dedicated to empowering and supporting female athletes who may feel unheard. Their inspiring journeys and powerful messages are something all, particularly female athletes, should hear!
Also, Rebel News was there to Report on this event! You can listen to the news clip here….
This is the most recent interview with both of them on the Shaun Newman Podcast (SNP), when they were in town to speak at our event! It’s a great interview!!
April Hutchinson
She was born in Toronto Ontario. She grew up in a very athletic family and always excelled at every sport she tried in public school and in high school. Surprisingly she did all of this as a functioning alcoholic, to her that type of life was normal.
Once she got sober and started powerlifting training in 2019, it didn’t take long for her to qualify for the Canadian Nationals in which she won a gold medal. Soon she found herself on the world stage. She got fourth at her first worlds and obtained a silver medal for Deadlift. She currently holds the North American Deadlift record.
Through her love for the sport, she discovered that trans identifying males were entering the women’s category and no one challenged it. The Canadian Powerlifting Union threatened her numerous times for speaking out until finally they issued a two-year suspension for her advocacy to keep female sports fair.
Through sobriety, she found her love for powerlifting, and through Powerlifting she found her love for advocacy in women’s rights and fair sport.
She continue’s to fight and help other female athletes who feel they have no voice. She once felt alone in her battle so she never wants anyone to go through that themselves.
Linda Blade
Linda Blade (@CoachBlade on Twitter) is a former Canadian Champion (1986) and a full-scholarship NCAA All American (1984) in Track & Field (heptathlon) out of the University of Maryland. Now licensed as a Chartered Professional Coach with a PhD in Kinesiology (1994), Linda has worked for over 30 years as a “Sport Performance Professional” training hundreds of athletes in seven countries, from 5 to 70 years of age, beginner to elite, in over 15 different sports. Linda’s expertise has included the development of national sports skills programs for school children, traveling to Islamic countries on behalf of World Athletics to teach women how to coach the girls and serving in leadership as president of Athletics Alberta (2014-2023), where she developed sex-based eligibility guidelines. Since 2018, Linda has been advocating for safety and fairness for female athletes by every means possible: social media, podcasts, radio shows, op-eds, articles, and political party engagement. Her most notable achievements in this regard are:
Collaborating with Canadian journalist Barbara Kay (2021) in writing the book:UNSPORTING: How Trans activism and Science Denial are Destroying Sport.
Establishing the International Consortium on Female Sport (ICFS) in 2023 - the umbrella group of organizations from 10 countries that serves as “the female voice” advocating for a female-only category in every sport.
Successfully convincing the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) to pass a policy resolution recognizing sex-based rights for women (September 2023).
Have a blessed long weekend!