Tough Girl Podcast Kathryn Bertine - Athlete and advocate for equality in women’s sports.
Kathryn Bertine is an author, athlete, activist and documentary filmmaker. During her pro career in cycling, she was a three-time Caribbean Champion, six-time national champion of St. Kitts and Nevis (SKN) and raced five years on pro circuit with four UCI domestic and World Tour teams Colavita, Wiggle-Honda, BMW and Cylance Pro Cycling. Now retired from professional racing, Bertine serves as Trek’s Ambassador for Equality in Cycling.
Off the bike, she is a filmmaker, activist, journalist and author of three nonfiction books, All the Sundays Yet to Come, As Good As Gold, and The Road Less Taken. From 2006 through 2012, Bertine was a columnist, author and senior editor for ESPN. When she pitched a documentary film on women’s pro cycling to ESPN in 2012, they rejected the proposal. So Bertine decided she would make it herself. After a two-year labor of love and crowdsourcing adventures, in 2014, HALF THE ROAD: The passion, pitfalls and power of women’s professional cycling was released. It won five film festivals, debuted in 16 nations, scored international distribution and successfully brought the hammer down on the corruption and sexism in sports. Half the Road is now available on iTunes, Vimeo, Amazon Prime and DVD. Five years later, she continues to receive royalties on a film ESPN said no one would watch.
As an advocate for equality in women’s sports, Bertine then started the social activism movement Le Tour Entier in an effort to bring parity to women’s professional road cycling, starting with the Tour de France. She and her team succeeded, and women’s field was included in 2014 with the addition of La Course by Tour de France. In 2017, she founded and serves as CEO for Homestretch Foundation, which provides free housing to female professional athletes struggling with the gender pay gap. Bertine was featured on the cover of Bicycling Magazine and profiled in Outside Magazine for her platforms of implementing change in the world.
As an activist, Bertine continues to serve as a public speaker/lecturer on equality and advocacy. She shares her journey and her message—that through passion, disruption, opportunity and focus, anything is possible and we’re all capable of effecting change—with corporations, universities and other professional outlets. She is currently at work on her fourth book.
Show notes
- Kathryn introduces herself
- Being an activist and athlete
- Going back to the start of 2016
- Why endurance athletes get better with age
- Deciding that 2016 would be her last year of racing professionally
- The big crash in April 2016
- TBI - Traumatic Brain Injury
- Recovery
- Doing one final race
- Fear of getting back on the bike?
- How her body remembered what had happened
- Friends and family’s fears
- Preparing to transition out of the sport
- Opening a non profit foundation
- What’s happening in women’s cycling
- Thoughts on the Tour de France
- Getting angry…
- Increasing awareness
- How Kathryn is making change happen
- Being a voice in her sport
- Pro contracts that stop women talking about inequality
- Being exhausted
- Why anyone can create change
- New book and the challenges of publishing
- To self publish or not?
- Funding her lifestyle
- Big shout out to TREK BIKES
- Am I worthy
- The need to keep proving yourself
- How we can support Kathryn with her work
- Quick Fire Questions
Social Media
CEO, Homestretch Foundation: www.HomestretchFoundation.org
Author/Activist/Pro Cyclist: www.kathrynbertine.com
Documentary Filmmaker: www.HalfTheRoad.com
@kathrynbertine
@halftheroad
@letourentier
@HomestretchFdn
@kathrynbertine
@halftheroad
@letourentier
@HomestretchFdn