From Pro Tennis to Saudi: Alex Tashbaeva on Building a Life She Never Planned

Alex Tashbaeva stopped going to school at twelve. She'd already been on a tennis court eight hours a day since she was five, and her Uzbek-Soviet parents had decided she was going to be a champion. By sixteen she'd left home; by nineteen she was the only girl on a ten-person coaching team flying to Riyadh to build out the Saudi national tennis programme.

She said yes on a phone call. She knew nothing about the country.

This week we talk to Alex about what those first years actually looked like — coaching the under-14 boys' national team, building the women's programme alone over the summers when her colleagues went home to Europe, and how the Jeddah Yacht Club years pulled her sideways into hospitality and events. She tells us why she resisted calling herself a content creator long after her TikToks were working, and what she sees in Saudi now that she didn't five years ago.

She and Cedric are in Riyadh now and heading back to Jeddah. There's a marketing agency, a YouTube studio, and plans we get into.

Listen wherever you get podcasts: pod.link/insidesaudi

00:00:00 Cold open 00:01:00 Welcome and intro 00:02:40 Two fires: living with Cedric 00:05:07 Moving to Saudi: the path through the US and Spain 00:05:57 Tennis from age five and an Uzbek-Soviet upbringing 00:08:16 Leaving home at sixteen 00:10:38 The phone call: only girl on a ten-person team to Riyadh 00:11:13 Arriving in Saudi with no expectations 00:12:42 Coaching the national under-14 boys 00:14:26 The pivot to hospitality at Jeddah Yacht Club 00:17:53 Meeting Cedric 00:18:09 Why she refused to call herself a content creator 00:20:11 Building the women's programme alone 00:24:00 Medina, six months ago 00:26:25 Jeddah vs Riyadh: pace, traffic, and where you actually live 00:31:36 What they're building next 00:34:30 Tips for starting on social in Saudi 00:44:00 Reading the comments and adjusting the content 00:50:51 What's next