#164: Kathryn Bertine on Standing on the Front Lines of Change

Kathryn Bertine is an author, athlete, activist and filmmaker and you’ll meet her on Sparta Chicks Radio this week. 

In 2006, Kathryn was a journalist who had been racing as a professional triathlete, when a journalism assignment with ESPN changed the trajectory of her life. 

The task: to be a guinea pig and see if she could qualify for the Olympic Games in a sport within 18 months. And she chose the sport of road cycling. 

Now, a spoiler alert: she didn’t make the team - but as she writes in Stand, “something wild happened”. She “almost” did. And the “almost” changed her.

“[I]t is not the victories or losses that define our paths in life but the Wonder and What Ifs that lie between”

Not only did she come to fall in love with road cycling during the ESPN assignment, but she also became aware and started to question the inequities she could see in the sport. 

So she set 3 goals - to become a professional cyclist, to get women into the Tour de France and to quiet the demons of worthlessness in her head.

She shares the stories of this — and much more in her compelling new memoir, Stand: A memoir on activism. A manual for progress. What really happens when we stand on the front lines of change.