FBBUK: The Retransformation of Linda Gartside

Linda the NABBA Champion - note the smile.

A long long time ago, well, four years ago, FMS brought you The Transformation of Linda Gartside, the story of how a binge-eating teenager with a love of Arnold became NABBA Ms Universe 2012. Like Rocky in Rochdale but with an FBB protagonist.

It's one of my personal favourite posts, not least because it's one and only comment is from the woman herself. She read it. And she liked it. And she said I was "very kind".

The swoon lasted weeks as I recall.



Now, fast forward from that 2012 NABBA Universe moment to 2017. The girl who was too embarrassed to join a gym and instead worked out with dumbbells in her garage as Arnold looked on from the cover of his book is about to go on stage at his event and perform under his banner. Her "soul dream", she calls it, is about to come true.

She's 47.




Since switching to the UKBFF and the Physique division, Linda has progressed slowly but surely upwards. She was 3rd at the British Championships in 2014, but 6th the following year. However, she followed that disappointment with 2nd (behind Rosanna Harte, who got the pro card) at the British Olympia Amateur the following week. Last year she competed at the British Championships again, and placed 2nd again, then at the IFBB Diamond Cup in Liverpool a week later, she was 3rd.

Was she happy?



In a word, no.

I had forgotten who I was, and why I competed, she told her Instagram followers after she'd returned from Barcelona. I was lost in a race, leaving "me" behind.


"A post show rack of ribs causes gains n veins". Hell yes!

"Me" has a name. The name she uses on social media, the name she signed on the bottom of my 2013 post (with an x - weeks that swoon lasted, I tell you) - Linny.



Linny had been lost for some time, continues Rochdale's finest, the Arnold Classic Europe was where I found "me" again. The moment I gave up the chase for winning, I regained my inner freedom, and found my happiness. Once I stopped chasing, Linny caught up, and now I have found the "me" that I lost five years ago.



There she is, then. October 2017, the REtransformation of Linda Gartside into the woman she was when we last met her. She has a good man beside her now, two grown up children, and they all came to Barcelona to cheer her on and were all, as Linda tells it, integral in persuading her she was good enough to compete. You see she doesn't seem quite to have lost that teenage girl who was so overwhelmed when she first walked into a gym and turned and ran home. And why should she? That girl was Linny too. And though it's completely irrelevant, she has two new silver medals - for 2nds in both the up to 163cam and the Masters classes to add to what must be the biggest collection of her silver and bronze in British Female Bodybuilding!



More importantly, she says "the smile is back".

It's so good to see her happy.

Congratulations Linda!