Edmonton-based sport performance coach, former Canadian track and field national champion, and author of Unsporting. Linda holds a PhD in Kinesiology and served as President of Athletics Alberta for nearly a decade — the only provincial athletic body in Canada to adopt sex-based eligibility guidelines for its competitions.
Unsporting: How Trans Activism and Science Denial Are Destroying Sport (2021)
Co-authored with Barbara Kay, provides a thorough, evidence-based examination of the physiological advantages conferred by male puberty — advantages that remain significant and are not meaningfully reversed by hormone therapy — and documents how those advantages have been systematically discounted in the development of gender identity policies in sport at every level. Drawing on Dr. Blade's unique combination of elite athletic experience, doctoral-level kinesiology research, and decades of professional coaching, the book provides the scientific grounding that was absent from public debates about transgender inclusion in sport. It traces the adoption of gender identity eligibility policies from provincial school athletic associations through national sport bodies to the International Olympic Committee, and examines the specific harms to female athletes in terms of competition outcomes, scholarships, and physical safety.
The book concludes with a concrete proposal for restoring sex-based categories in competitive sport, and remains the primary Canadian reference work on this issue. It became an Amazon bestseller on publication and is widely cited in legislative and policy contexts. For athletes, coaches, and policy-makers who need the science laid out clearly and the institutional history documented carefully, Unsporting is the essential starting point.
Biography
Dr. Linda Blade is a former NCAA All-American and National Champion of Canada in track and field (heptathlon, 1986), who has spent over thirty years as a sport performance professional coach in Edmonton, Alberta. With a PhD in Kinesiology from Simon Fraser University and a Chartered Professional Coach designation, she has worked with hundreds of athletes across more than fifteen sports — from beginners to Olympic-level competitors — and has conducted coach education programs internationally on behalf of World Athletics, including a landmark course for female coaches in Iran in 1995.
From 2014 to 2023, Linda served as President of the Board for Athletics Alberta. Under her leadership, Athletics Alberta became the only provincial athletic body in Canada to establish sex-based eligibility guidelines — requiring male-born athletes to compete in the male category regardless of gender identity. That policy remains the clearest example of what principled, evidence-based sport governance looks like at the provincial level.
In 2021, Linda co-authored Unsporting: How Trans Activism and Science Denial Are Destroying Sport with National Post columnist Barbara Kay. The book provides a thorough, evidence-based examination of male physiological advantage in sport, documents the institutional capture that has driven policy changes at every level from provincial school boards to the International Olympics Committee, and makes the case for restoring sex-based sporting categories.
Linda is a spokesperson for Canadian Women's Sex-Based Rights (caWsbar), a collaborator in establishing the International Consortium on Female Sport, and a key voice advising policy-makers across Canada on the science behind sex-based eligibility. Her combination of elite athlete experience, advanced academic credentials, and decades of coaching practice gives her a perspective on this issue that few can match.
