Golfer blames mid-air f light ‘rampage’ on his partner’s sleeping pills
A TOP golfer who groped a woman on a flight has blamed his mid-air antics on sleeping pills his girlfriend left in his wash bag, a court heard yesterday.
Thorbjorn Olesen denied mixing the tablets with alcohol ‘for the buzz’ and said he ‘felt horrible’ after learning of his crazed behaviour on board the British Airways jet.
The 31-year-old Ryder Cup winner admitted having up to six drinks before blacking out in the first class section on the flight from Nashville to Heathrow after a US tournament in 2019, jurors were told.
However, the Dane blamed his antics, which included groping a woman and urinating on a seat and the aisle, on a reaction to his girlfriend’s sleeping pills.
His partner Lauren Zafer, an accountant at PwC who is the mother of his son, told the court that she had ordered the Ambien pills online – and felt ‘immense guilt’ that Olesen had ended up taking them.
Aldersgate House Nightingale Court in London was told that during the flight, Olesen ran around the cabin ‘like a little boy’, got stuck in the toilet and swore at cabin crew when told to sit down. Giving evidence, Miss Zafer said when she realised that Olesen had taken her tablets, her ‘stomach turned inside out’.
The golfer looked ‘like the world had just ended’ after he was released by police, she said.
Miss Zafer felt ‘quite horrified’ by the allegations and realising her pills could be to blame.
‘My stomach turned inside out because I knew how they must’ve been the Ambien and how strong they were and I felt immense guilt’, she said. ‘It was all my fault that this happened.’
Olesen, who lives in Chelsea, west London, denies sexual assault, assault by beating and being drunk on an aircraft on July 29, 2019. He was on board with other golf stars including Ian Poulter, 45, and Justin Rose, 41, following a competition in Memphis.
Cabin service director Graham Gee said he noticed Olesen in business class and he appeared to be ‘unsteady on his feet and under the influence of something’.
Giving evidence yesterday, the sportsman told the jury he would never ‘consciously’ risk his career by committing a crime and had no memory of most of the flight.
Asked by his barrister, Trevor Burke QC, about his feelings, Olesen said: ‘I felt absolutely horrible and I was very sorry. I could not believe what they were saying what happened.’
He added: ‘I was just embarrassed and felt horrible.’
Olesen said he would ‘never’ have taken the pills had he known they were prescriptiononly or that side effects included ‘sleep walking’ and ‘amnesia’.
He denied remembering being abusive to cabin crew, touching a woman’s breast or urinating on another passenger’s seat.
‘The first thing I remember is police coming into my seat’, he said. ‘I felt a bit all over the place. I was very confused and I think in shock mostly.’
Olesen said his partner later told him she had experienced incidents after taking the pills for insomnia, including vacuuming their whole house and eating chocolates without remembering.
Prosecutor Max Hardy told him: ‘It was your choice what drinks you had that day... and you chose what pills to take as well, and I suggest when you took those pills you just didn’t care about what effect they may have on you.’
Olesen replied: ‘Yes, I did care. I thought they were going to make me sleep all the way to London.’ The trial continues.