A coach who was exposed as a child sex offender after making an appearance at the Paris Olympics had previously abused a teenage girl while coaching her.
Australian Brett Sutton, 65, coached Swiss Julie Derron to silver in the triathlon, ahead of Team GB’s Beth Potter, on Wednesday.
He received accreditation from China and was present at the event, where he gave an interview to Swiss television near the finish line on the Pont Alexandre III.
In 1999, Sutton pleaded guilty to five counts of sexually abusing a 13-year-old Australian girl, a swimmer he had coached in the late 1980s.
He was sentenced to two years in prison, although the sentence was suspended for three years.
Judge Robert Hall said Sutton had interfered with the girl in a “gross and disgraceful manner” and “abused her role to an inexcusable degree,” The Sunday Times reported.
The court heard a series of allegations during Sutton’s 1999 case, which revealed graphic details including that he had forced a girl to perform oral sex on him.
The victim had the courage to report the incident to the police once she was an adult and married.
Australian coach Brett Sutton, 65, has been found guilty of five counts of child sexual abuse at the Olympics.
The woman worked with police and secretly recorded a phone conversation with Sutton, who made a series of admissions of sexual abuse.
Sutton was convicted after pleading guilty to five offences and failing to present any evidence to the court.
By refusing to give a statement, Sutton’s victim was spared from questioning.
However, it did allow Sutton’s lawyer to make claims in his mitigation motion that could never be challenged in court, The Observer reported in 2002.
Sutton told The Observer he no longer trains children under 16 because “it’s the age of consent”.
“My lawyer told me that. That way, no one can say I’m a pedophile,” Sutton said.
Mr Hall told Sutton, who was the national triathlon coach preparing a number of athletes for the Sydney Games, that they would “suffer disadvantages from his absence from the scene”.
Sutton was subsequently banned from coaching by several federations and given a three-year ban by the International Triathlon Union and Triathlon Australia.
Australia’s National Olympic Committee told The Australian that Sutton “has been banned from swimming for life in Australia following his conviction for sexual offences”.
Sutton has also been banned for life by USA Triathlon since 2021.
International Triathlon Union president Les McDonald commented on Sutton’s career following his conviction.
Mr McDonald said any athlete coached by Sutton should not be allowed to compete internationally.
However, Sutton has been allowed to rebuild his coaching career despite his conviction.
Sutton moved to Switzerland after his marriage collapsed following his conviction and has run a family coaching business in the ski resort of St Moritz for more than 20 years.
Sutton received accreditation from China and coached Derron (center), who won second place.
On his website, Sutton claims to have made a name for himself by shaping the careers of “many of the sport’s icons over the past 35 years” and charges $999 a month for his expertise.
A spokesman for Sutton confirmed he was an accredited Chinese coach for the Paris Olympics.
She explained that Sutton attended the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo, 2016 in Rio de Janeiro and 2012 in London as an accredited member of the Swiss team.
A spokesman for the Swiss National Olympic Committee told The Australian that athletes choose their own coach for the Games.
“Brett Sutton does not work for Swiss Olympic and has no role to play for our organisation in Paris,” he said.
‘Swiss athletes decide for themselves who they work with as personal trainers.’
Sutton has since pulled out of the Paris Olympics when his athletes finished competing.