Sources: Embattled USA Swimming Coach Alex Pussieldi Hasn’t Really Retired — He’s Just Reorganizing His Brazil-to-Florida Swimmer Pipeline

Alex Pussieldi’s USA Swimming File: “Swimmer scared of [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] said no one would believe him”
February 12, 2014
EXCLUSIVE: 2004-05 USA Swimming Investigation Also Opened Window on Coach Alex Pussieldi’s Videos of His Sex With Underage Boys, Sources Say
February 14, 2014

by Irvin Muchnick and Tim Joyce

 

Alex Pussieldi, who Concussion Inc. has revealed continued to coach club and high school swimming for nine years after a complainant told USA Swimming that Pussieldi secretly videotaped him and other Brazilian and Mexican swimmers Pussieldi housed after recruiting them to Florida, announced his retirement from coaching last year. However, knowledgeable swimming sources say that Pussieldi is merely taking a break from the pool deck.

These sources told us that Pussieldi did not step aside from the Davie Nadadores because he feared that the decade-old information about his alleged clandestine bathroom video camera — provided in detail to a USA Swimming investigator by a swimmer who also accused Pussieldi of assault and battery at a 2004 practice of the Fort Lauderdale Swim Team — would resurface.

Pussieldi, his former Fort Lauderdale swim boss, Hall of Famer Jack Nelson, and others with knowledge of the 2004 investigation were confident that USA Swimming would succeed in keeping the secret videotape issue covered up, according to our sources.

But Pussieldi was under increasing pressure last year on a related matter: his use of ineligible swimmers, “Brazilian ringers,” at Florida meets. These allegations first publicly surfaced shortly after Pussieldi resigned as a Nelson club assistant and became a coach at Pine Crest School. See “Dillon Rips Pussieldi, Files Protest,” South Florida’s Sun-Sentinel, August 3, 2005, http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2005-08-03/sports/0508030867_1_swimmers-senior-nationals-pine-crest-school.

According to our sources, the Florida Gold Coast local swimming committee was on the verge of suspending Pussieldi last year. That is why he announced his retirement.

In fact, these sources say, Pussieldi has never listed his Fort Lauderdale home for sale. He is working in the Brazilian media in the run-up to the 2016 Summer Olympics there, while continuing to recruit swimming prospects in that country to move with him to a new club he intends to set up in Florida.

We have tried numerous times in numerous ways to solicit comment from Pussieldi, who is in Sochi covering the Winter Games for Brazilian television.

Complete links to Concussion Inc.’s Pussieldi coverage, which began February 7, are at https://concussioninc.net/?p=8652.

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Concussion Inc. - Author Irvin Muchnick