UK Athletics failed to properly investigate allegations that its coach Rana Reider was in an intimate relationship with an 18-year-old British junior female athlete while he was married and in charge of sprinting for the organisation, The Times can reveal.
Instead, UKA responded to a complaint made by a team doctor — with the support of a team manager — by announcing four months later that Reider, who was 44 at the time of the relationship, would be leaving his post but would continue to work on a “freelance” basis with British athletes, including the vulnerable teenager at the centre of the allegations.
One leading female coach, who has asked not to be named, has accused the organisation of putting “medal success ahead of the welfare of that athlete” by apparently sticking by a man who has coached a number of athletes to Olympic titles. “It’s shocking,” she said.
The governing body had in fact allowed funded athletes to work with Reider until this year, only intervening last month when officials discovered that he was the subject of a sexual misconduct investigation being led by the US Center for SafeSport.
Since then the sprinters Adam Gemili and Laviai Nielsen have been removed from the Lottery-funded World Class Programme by UKA after resisting a request to leave Reider’s star-studded Florida-based sprint group.
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In July 2014 Reider travelled with the British team to the World Junior Athletics Championships in Eugene, Oregon. During the championships a doctor, with the knowledge and backing of a female team manager, raised concerns about Reider’s conduct with Neil Black, then the UKA head of performance, a member of the safeguarding department and other senior figures.
The doctor, The Times understands, said that Reider and the athlete had been seen by staff holding hands, adding that the athlete was being isolated from the group. There were additional claims that she had been seen leaving Reider’s hotel room and was being provided with inappropriate private therapy sessions. The doctor compared the behaviour to “grooming”, citing the “power differential” amid concerns that the athlete, while 18, was a “vulnerable adult”.
Sources have said that Reider was confronted and asked to leave the team hotel in Eugene, but the matter was not then dealt with by launching a formal safeguarding investigation. Instead the safeguarding team referred it back to the performance staff, who allowed Reider to leave in October 2014 while continuing to work with British athletes. They simply chose not to renew his contract.
In its statement at the time, UKA said that Reider was due to “leave his full-time post” and “revert to a freelance coach role”, continuing “to coach athletes towards global championship success”.
Reider initially moved his training group — which was rocked during the Olympic Games in Tokyo this year by a positive drugs test for the Nigerian sprinter Blessing Okagbare — to the Netherlands. British athletes followed him there and a recent report suggests that UKA did not share any concerns with Dutch officials even when asked about “rumours”.
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Reider worked for the Dutch federation between 2014 and 2018 but last month its technical director, Ad Roskam, said: “When we approached Rana to come to the Netherlands, there were some rumours.
“I then had contact with my colleague, the technical director in England, and also several conversations in the circuit. All those people assured me that nothing was wrong.”
It was an open secret at UKA, with senior staff across a number of departments aware of the allegations and of the view that it was the principal reason why Reider left the federation.
UKA guidelines, updated this year as part of a safeguarding overhaul overseen by the recently departed chief executive, Joanna Coates, state that a coach can be disqualified for a relationship with an athlete over the age of 18. In fact it was only as a consequence of that overhaul, and a review of historic safeguarding cases as well as changes to its funding policies, that UKA responded to rumours about Reider by contacting its American counterpart. At that point it was informed about the SafeSport investigation.
In 2014 the UKA only “strongly recommended” that coaches did not have relationships with athletes aged 18 years or over, but the hierarchy at that time did take action against coaches engaging in what were regarded as “inappropriate relationships”. Black, who died last year, and Niels de Vos, then the UKA chief executive, were in charge when the international javelin coach David Parker was banned for four years for such a relationship with a female student and athlete at Loughborough University.
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That, however, was the result of a safeguarding investigation, and one leading female athletics coach has questioned why the same process was not followed in Reider’s case, given the age of the athlete. “Not to properly investigate the situation, which so many people in the sport knew about, amounts to a serious failure to protect the welfare of the athlete concerned,” she said.
De Vos and Black were also in charge when Gemili went to work with Reider, first in the Netherlands and then Florida, after the 2016 Rio Olympics, in which he had finished fourth in the 200m.
In a statement issued to The Times, UKA acknowledged that the matter would now be handled differently and would not simply be left to the performance team to handle.
“The records we have of the issues and concerns raised at the time demonstrate that matters were referred to UK Athletics and investigated by recommendation of the welfare department under the terms of [Reider’s] employment contract, which was terminated soon after,” the statement read.
“Whilst we cannot disclose any further detail due to the ongoing investigation, we can confirm we continue to be in contact with US SafeSport and will fully assist with any information we can provide.
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“There have been significant changes in structure, policies and process concerning safeguarding issues over the last two years and if similar concerns are raised [now], the investigation would be led primarily through the safeguarding systems in place.”
Ryan Stevens, the American attorney acting for Reider, responded last month to the news of the US SafeSport investigation by saying that his 51-year-old client denies any wrongdoing.
In a statement to The Times this week, Stevens said: “We’re ready to address the SafeSport matter if SafeSport decides to give us any substantive information, which to date they have not. In the meantime, I decline to engage in the dragging of Rana’s hard-earned reputation through the mud over questions about 7 years ago.”
