US Rowing strip Olympic medals from former coach after sexual abuse investigation

United States rowing released a 154-page report on former coach Ted Nash

United States rowing coach stripped of Olympic medals (Getty Images)

U.S. Rowing stripped honours from a two-time Olympic medalist and nine-time Olympic coach after an investigation found allegations that he sexually abused a teenager more than 50 years ago to be credible.

The federation on Tuesday released a 154-page report on Ted Nash, who died in 2021. The report said Jennifer Fox’s allegations that Nash had groomed and sexually abused her in 1973 were believable. They met that year at a horseback-riding camp where Nash was teaching when he was 40 and Fox was 13.

Fox documented her experience in a 2018 movie “The Tale” that she told investigators was a fictionalized account of the alleged abuse. The movie did not name Nash, who was still alive at the time. The New York Times published a 2023 story about Fox’s experience — in which she revealed Nash’s identity — that led to the investigation.

“This whole process has been really, really hard and the result is like removing a lifelong festering tumour from your body,” Fox told the newspaper Tuesday.

The law firm that conducted the report was not asked to find legal evidence of abuse. Still, it said it interviewed nearly 50 witnesses who corroborated many of the allegations “and we did not uncover evidence that expressly refutes Ms. Fox’s claims or suggests a motive for Ms. Fox to fabricate her account of abuse.”

Among the report’s findings were that a third party turned in details of the case to the U.S. Center for SafeSport, which took jurisdiction over the matter but administratively closed the case in part because Nash had already died.

Fox turned to U.S. Rowing, which said in a news release “we determined that the gravity of Ms. Fox’s claims outweighed Mr. Nash’s inability to respond to these allegations.”

U.S. Rowing rescinded all honours it had given to Nash, including his 2005 Man of the Year and 2013 U.S. Rowing Medal of Honor.