Athletes say that two trainers take advantage of a teenage biathlete from Maine while trying to win Olympic medals. The biathlete asks, “What comes next?”
Six former Olympians and other biathletes say that sexual abuse and harassment of women on the U.S. Biathlon team by coaches and other people in power over the years have been ignored, dismissed, or given an out over decades by officials more focused on winning medals than holding offenders accountable.
Men involved rose through the ranks of the sport, but these women, who told The Associated Press that they were abused in a way that went back to the 1990s, had to quit racing early.
After the young biathlete he was accused of sexually abusing tried to kill himself, one coach quit, but he was later hired to train the U.S. Paralympic team.
“The leaders of U.S. Biathlon always seem to side with the abusers instead of the victim,” Boutot, who is now 33 years old, said.
The women came forward after AP reported that Olympian Joanne Reid had been sexually abused and harassed for years. The U.S. Center for SafeSport, a watchdog group set up after the Larry Nassar U.S. Gymnastics scandal to look into sex abuse claims in Olympic sports, agreed with the women.
U.S. Biathlon ordered a separate investigation into team culture and safety after the AP story. It found that biathletes were subjected to “misogynistic” behavior while racing and were afraid of being punished if they spoke out.
The report from outside auditor Vestry Laight, which came out last week, said that the athletes who were polled said the sport was “dominated by men who have a very different outlook on how to treat women” and that there wasn’t enough effort put into making the environment respectful.
In answer to the auditor’s report, biathlon officials said they were making a “action plan” that included workshops with staff and athletes to define core values and come up with a way to track progress.
SafeSport interviews also revealed that the atmosphere was sexualized. In the watchdog group’s 2022 report on the Reid case, psychologist for the U.S. Biathlon Team Sean McCann talked about “a European boys club culture,” where some men shared sexual comments and other explicit content on a secret WhatsApp group.
The United States has never won an Olympic medal in biathlon. Officials in the U.S. hired European teachers and staff because they wanted to do well in a sport that was mostly played in Europe. They also didn’t care when women on the team said they were sexually harassed or abused, according to everyone who was interviewed.
