Alex Pussieldi — Swimming Coach Driven out of Florida after Allegations of Trafficking and Sexual Abuse — Announces a Tour of Clinics in Brazil, Sponsored by Speedo

P.S. 9:30 a.m. Pacific Time, November 29: Speedo International’s London-based public relations agency, Gung Ho, acknowledged our query and promised a response early next week.

The full Alex Pussieldi story is told in Chapter 9, “Sex, Lies, and Alex Pussieldi,” of the new book UNDERWATER: The Greed-Soaked Tale of Sexual Abuse in USA Swimming and Around the Globe.

PREVIOUSLY:

“Alex Pussieldi Update: Decade After Ouster in Florida, Peeping Tom and Multinational Trafficker Coach Remains a Powerful Figure in Brazilian Swimming,” October 27, https://concussioninc.net/?p=15882

“SwimSwam.com, Sport News Site, Adores ‘Journalist’ Alex Pussieldi — All-Time International Coaching Abuser, Now in His Third Act in Brazil,” October 29, https://concussioninc.net/?p=15895

by Irvin Muchnick

Alex Pussieldi — the Peeping Tom and human trafficking coach whose prominence in the U.S. ended with his indefinite suspension by Florida Gold Coast Swimming 11 years ago — has announced a two-month-long, nine-city coaching clinic tour of his native Brazil, with the sponsorship of the iconic swimming apparel brand Speedo.

This move significantly ups the ante on both Pussieldi’s legacy rehabilitation and his immediate role as a powerbroker in Latin America. Simultaneously, Pussieldi is listed as the communications coordinator for Confederación Sudamericana de Natación (CONSANAT), the South American aquatics governance body, based in Rio de Janeiro.

With this high-profile role on the country’s pool decks, Pussieldi is now also clearly more than a “swimming journalist” or an eminence grise, both domestically and internationally. At this point, explicitly, youth athletes in Brazil are in harm’s way of a credibly accused sex offender, as kids in the U.S. formerly were.

Here is a reproduction of the announcement of the Brazilian clinics from January 31 through March 9, 2025, made jointly on Instagram by Pussieldi and the Brazilian company Speedo Multisport. (More shortly on the controversial relationship between Speedo Multisport and the global Speedo brand.)

Though indefinitely suspended by Florida Gold Coast Swimming, the regional affiliate of USA Swimming, for hundreds of meet entry violations involving his Nadadores club in Davie, Florida, in the 2010s, Pussieldi has never been added to the USA Swimming banned list, which first became public in 2010 and has pushed up toward 250 names. This despite the fact that a 2004 USA Swimming investigation — published by this site with the redactions made in its original court filing (see http://muchnick.net/pussieldi.pdf) — revealed the details of the peeping secret video camera Pussieldi had installed in the bathroom of foreign swimmers he boarded at his Fort Lauderdale house. A Concussion Inc. investigation also exposed multiple other abuses and aspects of Pussieldi corruption in South Florida, which led all the way to his position of head coach of the Kuwaiti national team.

Civil lawsuit testimony and discovery have disclosed that USA Swimming maintains, in addition to the public “banned” list, a secret list of coaches “flagged” as undesirable and unfit to be on pool decks in this country. It’s not known if Pussieldi is on the flagged list. However, his fact pattern and adjudication resemble the situation of Hall of Fame coach Paul Bergen, who disappeared from roles in USA Swimming programs following revelations of his molestations of youth swimmers, including gold medalist Deena Deardurff. For many years, Bergen was the named honoree of the Paul Bergen International Junior Invitationals in Tualatin Hills, Oregon — sponsored by Nike — before a 2013 Concussion Inc. investigation prompted USA Swimming to prevail on local authorities to remove Bergen’s name from the title of the event.

Spokespersons for USA Swimming, in Colorado Springs, and Speedo International Ltd, in England, have yet to respond to our requests for comment for this story.

An additional wrinkle involves the use by Pussieldi’s national sponsor, Speedo Multisport, of the Speedo name and trademark. A source in Brazilian Swimming told us, “Speedo in Brazil is illegal. A pirate brand.”

The source was referring to the outcome of complex intellectual property litigation there. Speedo Multisport’s registration lapsed with the National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI), the government’s trademark regulation agency. An article earlier this year at the legal news site Migalhas said, according to a translation from the Portuguese, that a court ruled “the Brazilian company Multisport will not be able to use the ‘Speedo’ symbol on its products, from the moment the registrations expire. The panel unanimously accepted the request from the companies Speedo Internacional and Speedo Holdings, owners and creators of the Australian brand.”