UK Athletics chief forced to quit days before start date
Hyde Peters resigns over safeguarding scandal Exit deepens turmoil following Salazar fallout
UK Athletics is in turmoil after its incoming chief executive was forced to stand down over claims she failed to tell her local club about her husband’s “inappropriate relationship” with a 15-year-old girl.
Zara Hyde Peters had been due to take up her £200,000-a-year role on Dec 1, but the governing body told her to resign.
The organisation receives £27 million of funding in the current Olympic cycle and faced reputational damage.
The enforced resignation – just weeks after performance director Neil Black quit over the Alberto Salazar scandal – piles yet more pressure on UK Athletics ahead of the Olympics in Tokyo next year. UK Sport said yesterday that it would be demanding answers.
Hyde Peters was left fighting to keep her job after claims her husband was allowed to continue coaching and managing at a club where she was vice-chair after he was banned from teaching over the alleged relationship with a 15-year-old.
She also stands accused of having “undermined” a bullying inquiry into another coach at Coventry Godiva Harriers and of being too close to Mo Farah and Paula Radcliffe to oversee UK Athletics’s review of its relationship with the disgraced Nike Oregon Project.
Chris Clark, the UK Athletics chairman, confirmed yesterday that her dismissal had followed crisis talks on Sunday. “Following recent press reports and significant media attention focused on Zara Hyde Peters, the UKA board convened a meeting and discussed the situation fully,” a statement on his behalf said. “Following the meeting, I had time with Zara to review the situation and we have agreed together, that she will now not be taking up her position as CEO on Dec 1.”
Over the weekend, the Commonwealth Games Federation had asked Birmingham 2022 to cut ties with her until the scandal was resolved. UK Sport is poised to investigate the circumstances surrounding her appointment.
“Maintaining the highest standards of ethical and professional conduct is crucial to the integrity of sport,” a statement from UK Sport said. “We will be seeking a face-toface meeting with UK Athletics at the earliest opportunity to discuss next steps.”
CGF had written to Birmingham 2022 over the weekend, recommending Hyde Peters was suspended from its board and as chair of its athletes’ advisory committee pending an investigation into accusations made by Martin Slevin, a recently retired detective chief inspector and former chair of Coventry Godiva.
Slevin said he would take evidence he had against Hyde Peters and her husband, Mike Peters, to UK Sport, rather than UK Athletics, which he accused of failing to investigate properly after he first alerted it to Mike Peters’ alleged activities more than three years ago.
Peters was permanently barred from teaching in October 2012 over what a damning judgment found to be “very serious” misconduct, which included an “exchange of inappropriate photographs” with a vulnerable pupil while a PE teacher at Bilton High School, Warwickshire. He had been cleared six years earlier of sexually assaulting the same girl during a trial at Warwickshire Crown Court.
Hyde Peters, who has not responded to repeated requests for comment, is understood to be adamant she and her husband abided by safeguarding rules at Coventry Godiva before relocating to Hampshire in 2017.
She worked at UK Athletics between 2000 and 2008, including as director of athlete development, before joining British Triathlon and overseeing the emergence of Alistair and Jonny Brownlee.
The scandal comes as UK Athletics continues to deal with the fallout from the Salazar ban imposed by the United States Anti-doping Agency.
It came after a UK Athletics review into Salazar in 2015 had found “no reason to be concerned” about Farah’s coach and cleared the distance runner to continue working at his Nike Oregon Project. Salazar’s former assistant coach and whistleblower, Steve Magness, called the review a “sham”.