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A South African cyclist, Shaun-Nick Bester has been banned for 15 years from the sport after he was found guilty of misconduct related to sexual grooming, abuse and harassment.

Cycling South Africa received notices accusing “Bester” of sexual grooming, harassment and abuse via its online whistleblower reporting portal in February last year. The 33-year-old cyclist licensed with Cycling South Africa also operated a coaching business as a UCI level 4 certified coach.

The Guardian, an independent consultancy, was contracted to conduct an independent investigation into these allegations and reported serious misconduct on the part of Bester, which took place at a school which is a member of Cycling South Africa and Bester’s home.

CSA noted that the misconduct involved two young women – one aged 14 and the other 17 – who reported incidents of being sexually harassed and/or introduced to pornography by Bester, their cycling coach.

Image: X/@ShaunNickBester

While Bester, through his legal team, initially requested Cycling South Africa’s executive board to reach an agreement in terms of which he would be suspended for a short period of time and that a non-disclosure agreement would be signed, this proposal was rejected.

The cycling body then undertook an investigation which found Bester guilty of all misconduct charges.

Bester appealed the guilty verdict, from where the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee were involved through the appointment of an independent appeals panel, but these appeals failed as all the misconduct charges were upheld.

Bester was found to be guilty of five of the charges of misconduct.

In the finding dealing with the sanction, the appeal panel recorded its awareness to “numerous incidents of inappropriate sexual conduct”.  The appeal panel also makes mention of issues involving the USA Ladies Gymnastic team, Dr Larry Nasser and the Bob Hewitt cases in this country.

CSA said that Bester should have applied more care in looking after minors under his coaching.

“As locus parentis, Bester should have shown more discretion and judgement. Instead, he was grooming the victims.

“The appeal panel went on to state that despite the safeguarding measures, ‘the problem still rears its ugly head’.”

Apart from receiving a 15-year ban, Bester was also slapped with a life-long suspended sentence.

Image: X/@ShaunNickBester

The appeal panel recorded that in considering an appropriate sanction, there needs to be “some degree of mercy and reasonableness”, but since he is a first-time offender, married and with a child, and coaching cycling as his sole source of income, the panel found that a lifelong ban from all cycling activities was inappropriate.

On top of the 15-year ban and lifelong suspended sentence, Bester will also need to pay 80% of Cycling South Africa’s legal costs.

[source:cyclingsa]