Snowboarders sue coach, U.S. Ski, USOPC in sexual assault case

Callan Chythlook-Sifsof turned on her car radio and heard an ad for the Winter Olympics. Then she heard another.

She changed the channel and heard one more.

That’s when the former U.S. snowboarder said she broke down last year, deciding to post on Instagram a series of allegations of sexual misconduct against her longtime coach Peter Foley.

One year later, Chythlook-Sifsof and two other former U.S. Ski and Snowboard athletes say the organization has not done enough to hold Foley or itself accountable. A new lawsuit filed this week by the three athletes accuses Foley of sexual assault, harassment and infliction of emotional distress — and alleges USSS leaders, including former CEO Gale “Tiger” Shaw, enabled and covered up the misconduct.

The lawsuit names Foley, Shaw, the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee and the U.S. Ski & Snowboard team as defendants.

“Today a group of fierce women who performed at the highest level in the sport of snowboarding have banded together to hold the gatekeepers of the sport liable for abuse and harassment,” said Sigrid McCawley, lead attorney for the three snowboarders. “For decades the abuse and harassment was just part of the toxic culture that endured as they pursued their dreams on their snowboards. They have bravely come forward to say no more and to demand change and accountability.”

The three athletes, however, are not alone in their concerns about the actions of the sports’ national governing body headquartered in Park City. The Salt Lake Tribune has spoken to 11 former athletes, parents and coaches over the last year who described an “institutional failure” within USSS during Foley’s 26-year tenure.

“It’s even bigger than just Peter Foley himself,” said Erin O’Malley, a plaintiff in the lawsuit who competed for the U.S. snowboard team from 1995-2001. “Yes, he is to blame for all of the one-on-one misconduct but I think because of the lack of checks and balances, and potential protection for females, it is more than him. … It’s the underpinning of dysfunction [throughout the organization].”

Lawsuits and loose oversight

Foley was hired by USSS as the first head coach of the U.S. boardercross team in 1994. The sport, a snowboarding event in which athletes race downhill through obstacles, was then a niche X-Games event, but Foley helped shepherd the sport onto the Olympic stage. In his 26 years, Foley’s players won 35 medals and across seven Olympic Games.

“Medals buy you power,” said one former assistant coach, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he still works in the industry.

The lawsuit filed this week and people who spoke to The Tribune claim Foley misused his power over nearly 20 of his years in charge. The lawsuit specifically lays out allegations of sexual assault and misconduct by Foley against three athletes:

• O’Malley alleges Foley pinned her against an elevator wall after a race and tried to kiss her before she was able to run away and hide under a hotel bed.

• Rosey Fletcher, 2006 Olympic bronze medalist, alleges Foley made her share a hotel bed with him during a training camp when she was 19 and sexually assaulted her.

• Chythlook-Sifsof said she was exposed to Foley’s misconduct on multiple occasions, but her attempts to report wrongdoing were ignored. She also alleges she was raped by another male coach on a different team, something she says was the consequence of the “toxic environment” Foley created, according to the lawsuit.

• A separate lawsuit filed by a former U.S. Ski and Snowboard staffer alleges Foley coerced her into posing nude for photographs at a World Cup event in 2008.

Foley was fired by the USSS last March about the time O’Malley and others shared their stories with ESPN. SafeSport, a government entity that aims to protect against sexual abuse in sports, has an ongoing investigation into the allegations.

Foley’s attorney, Howard Jacobs, said his client, “did not violate the SafeSport Code in any way or any analogous rules that were in place at the time.” Jacobs did not immediately return a call seeking comment on the lawsuit this week.

Former athletes, coaches and staffers, meanwhile, said they believe USSS leaders are responsible for enabling the alleged misconduct and failing to properly report it when it came to their attention.

“It was Peter’s team, for sure. And he could create any environment that he wanted,” said a coach who worked with Foley, and now works for a different national team. “But I can tell you, the guys above Peter are, in my mind, just as culpable as he is for this behavior.”

When Foley’s suspension was first announced last spring, his longtime supervisor and friend, director of snowboarding and freestyle skiing Jeremy Forster broke down in tears in a meeting with athletes, according to multiple people who attended the meeting. But nine people who spoke to the Tribune pointed to Forster, who had supervised Foley for nearly 25 years, as someone who failed to provide oversight.

“The fault in my opinion to a significant degree will always be with Forster for allowing Foley to exist unimpeded,” said Chris Tierney, the father of an Olympian.

Multiple coaches and athletes who spoke to The Tribune said Forster and others in USSS relinquished power and deferred to Foley’s judgment to the detriment of athletes.

The athletes’ lawsuit alleges that Fletcher and O’Malley both informed current USSS CEO Sophie Goldschmidt of the allegations in 2022 but the CEO failed to act on them appropriately.

USSS in a statement said it is letting SafeSport’s investigation play out.

“We are cooperating with that investigation to the extent permitted by law, and cannot comment further at this time,” the organization said in a statement provided to The Salt Lake Tribune last year.

“As a women-led, athletes-first organization, U.S. Ski & Snowboard has zero tolerance for any sexual misconduct, and we are committed to providing a healthy and respectful environment for our athletes. We have always strongly encouraged, and continue to encourage, any athlete or other individual with knowledge of sexual misconduct of any kind to report the matter to the Center.”

Chythlook-Sifsof said she wants more accountability from the upper reaches of management. This includes, she said, Goldschmidt being dismissed from her role and the organization going through an overhaul of leadership.

“When families entrust their young athletes to the care of the coaches and staff of the Olympics movement, they should be able to rest easy knowing that their daughters will not be harmed in any way by the very adults who the Olympics and the sport have placed in the all-important position of trust,” said Kenya Davis, a second attorney for the plaintiffs.

“Young, elite athletes work and sacrifice so much and certainly risk injury in pursuit of excellence, but the litigation filed today is about risk and injury of a very different and troubling kind. A premier coach in the sport fell down on the job, violated that trust and inflicted harm for which he and all involved will be held to account.”

Asking for help

Chythlook-Sifsof said her Instagram post, where she first made her allegations against Foley public during the 2022 Winter Olympics, wouldn’t have been necessary if USSS officials had acted properly the first came to them.

“These people were employed at that time, and they should have reported it,” Chythlook-Sifsof said. “I trusted them. They knew that.”

Chythlook-Sifsof said her first attempt to report Foley for sexual misconduct was in April of 2020 when she called team manager Abbi Nyberg. On that call, Chythlook-Sifsof said, she told Nyberg about allegations that Foley took nude photos of snowboard athletes on trips to Austria and Fiji.

At that point, according to SafeSport protocol adopted in 2017, Nyberg would have been required to report the alleged sexual misconduct directly to SafeSport. Nyberg could not be reached for comment. But Chythlook-Sifsof said that Nyberg instead connected her with assistant coach Jeff Archibald, who often stayed in the same hotel room as Foley on trips.

“We didn’t [just] talk about SafeSport. We strategized about SafeSport,” Chythlook-Sifsof said of the nature of their calls.

However, SafeSport says it is not on the participants to “investigate details” or to strategize. The obligation is simply to report. “In fact, in the SafeSport handbook, it specifically states participants should not do their own investigations,” a spokesperson said.

Archibald, who could not be reached for comment, stepped down in 2019 after 17 years in the organization. Per a SafeSport spokesperson, if the misconduct happened at the time of their employment, there can be an obligation to report even for someone no longer in the organization.

About the same time, Chythlook-Sifsof said she contacted a lawyer who specialized in sexual assault. Eventually, Chythlook-Sifsof said, Nyberg stopped answering her phone calls.

“All of a sudden her concerns and her questions clearly were about her own well-being,” Chythlook-Sifsof said. “The reality is they had an obligation to f—ing report. What really crushes me right now is, like, I was trying. I really was trying to pass that along to a higher up.”

Chythlook-Sifsof said she also called then-USSS CEO Tiger Shaw and told Shaw she wanted to speak to him about Foley. Shaw then told her that anything she said he had to report to SafeSport, Chythlook-Sifsof said. Chythlook-Sifsof said she felt uneasy at that point and told Shaw she did not want to report at the time.

“I could see him using his wheels to be tactful while also allowing me to feel like [I wasn’t bothering him],” she said of the call. “I think he just was very tactful.”

‘Frat party-esque’ culture

Multiple athletes and coaches who worked with Foley described his tenure as crossing professional boundaries in other ways. And a lack of oversight contributed to the rise of a “frat party-esque” culture that put women — both athletes and staffers — at risk, according to those who spoke to The Tribune.

The athletes and staffers spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared reprisal that could impact their futures in the industry.

It was “an adventure camp for kids,” one staffer who was hired in the late 2000s said. “But nobody really said anything.”

Before a World Cup in Russia, Foley appeared to come to a coaches’ welcome meeting drunk, then went and drank with athletes after, one former assistant coach said.

“I’m not saying that coaches and athletes don’t go to the same parties sometimes, but [not like this],” said a male skier who is now retired from the U.S. national team. “Coaches are not dancing with athletes. You know, coaches are congregating in one corner and athletes are in another corner. He was very blatant about creating a party culture. He used it as a tool.”

Male athletes often made “degrading remarks to women,” Chythlook-Sifsof said. On one occasion in training, an athlete told a female snowboarder to “hold his [penis]” while he went to the bathroom, she said.

The lawsuit alleges men stole female athletes’ underwear from hotel rooms and that “male athletes and coaches, Foley included, would bust into hotel rooms, get in the beds with female athletes, and proceed to ‘hump’ or imitate sexual acts with the legs of said female athletes.”

“And the coaches would just laugh,” the former assistant said. “The best way I can describe it is it was a high school clique and the men acted douchey toward women.”

“It was just a slow and steady building of a hyper-sexual culture,” Chythlook-Sifsof added.

One former staffer, who worked for U.S. Ski and Snowboard in the mid-to-late 2000s, has since filed a SafeSport report and a lawsuit alleging Foley coerced her into taking nude photos and later sexually assaulted her during a World Cup event in 2008.

The former staffer said she wants to ensure Foley never coaches again. She also pointed to other institutional issues within USSS that need to be addressed, including hiring more women in coaching roles and ensuring athletes and staffers feel safe at events.

“It was an unspoken rule to figure it out and find your way,” she said.

“I remember hitchhiking to get to a competition. I never rented a car in my entire time there. It was commendable to not spend money.

“Looking back on it now as an older professional, not giving people adequate resources puts them in vulnerable positions.”

That’s what she said happened to her in 20098. Foley was not coaching at that event, told the woman he did not have a place to stay and asked if he could share her room. The staffer said she had never told anyone about the incident before Chythlook-Sifsof made her allegations public, in part because of the culture within the organization.

“It’s something that every woman who works in sports or is part of co-ed sports feels innately: there is this bro culture and not this great seriousness paid to the needs or wants of women involved,” she said. “Women are supposed to mold to the men’s culture instead of a culture of mutual respect. From the outset of being involved, we’re made to feel like we’re interlopers because it’s not our playground.”