When Michael S. Downey resigned as chief of Britain’s Lawn Tennis Association in early January 2017, he said he did it because he wanted to be closer to his sons attending university in eastern Canada, about a 7-hour flight from London.
This seemed unusual at the time. By quitting two years before the end of his contract, he was reportedly leaving more than a million dollars on the table. He was also bowing out of one of London’s most prestigious positions, which brought him close to royalty, billionaires and celebrities who patronize the All England Lawn Tennis Club in southwest London.
Mr. Downey also gave the LTA six months notice, meaning he wouldn’t have to face scrutiny during Wimbledon, the most important sporting event of the year in London, and the most prestigious tournament in the world in a sport favored by diplomats, doctors, lawyers and royalty from many nations.
Mr. Downey soon returned to his previous position as CEO and President of Tennis Canada, an organization which governs tennis in Canada and which receives millions of dollars in funding from Canadian taxpayers, private donors, and corporate partners and sponsors such Rogers Communications and the National Bank of Canada.
At that time, sports media in Canada continued to laud Mr. Downey for overseeing Canada’s rise up the tennis rankings. Nobody seemingly knew about, or bothered to mention, a pedophile scandal that had been brewing under Mr. Downey’s watch at the LTA.
In December 2016, while Mr. Downey was still leading the LTA, police arrested Daniel Sanders, 42, formerly the head coach at Wrexham Tennis Centre, one of the UK’s largest, and charged him with grooming minors for sex. Mr. Downey resigned a few days later.
In July 2017, tennis media were mainly focused on Roger Federer winning a record 8th title at The Championships. But 10 days later, on July 26, 2017, Mr. Sanders plead guilty to seven counts of sexual activity with an underage girl, and one count of causing her to engage in sexual activity. A British judge sentenced Mr. Sanders, then age 42, to six years in prison.
A few months later on November 24, 2017, British media reported that British tennis chiefs would begin the sort of independent inquiry that apparently did not happen during Mr. Downey’s tenure with the LTA. SkySports reported that the LTA had previously not done enough to protect children. “Nothing is more important to us than the safety of children who play tennis,” an LTA spokesman said. “Creating a secure, respectful environment for those in our sport is our top priority as an organization.”
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/nov/23/lta-child-protection-failings-coach-abuse
Mr. Downey returned to lead Tennis Canada for six more years until announcing in February 2023 that he would “retire” at the end of December 2023. Mr. Downey, who began his marketing career with pharmaceutical company Warner-Lambert before it was acquired by Pfizer, did not say why he was retiring at age 66.
“Being Chief Executive of Tennis Canada has been my dream job,” said Mr. Downey, according to Tennis Canada’s website. “I was downright lucky to have held this coveted leadership position not once, but twice.”
Canadian sports media, largely owned by the corporations they cover, hailed Mr. Downey’s achievements during his total of 15 years at Tennis Canada. More than five years after the LTA child abuse scandal, it’s not known whether British police questioned or sought the assistance of Mr. Downey. Mr. Downey’s involvement with Dan Sanders and the pedophile scandal remain a mystery.
But it’s clear that Mr. Sanders was close to the biggest names in British tennis. Sky Sports reported that Mr. Sanders was a former doubles partner of Tim Henman, a legendary British player and friend of Roger Federer. Mr. Sanders also coached doubles champion Jamie Murray, brother of 2-time Wimbledon champion Andy Murray. The Guardian described Mr. Sanders as “a fixture in British tennis for years, a familiar character at the LTA’s headquarters in Roehampton when he captained representative teams.”
The Dan Sanders case was not the first of its kind in tennis, which is rife with accusations, suspensions and arrests concerning doping, match-fixing, domestic assault and child abuse.
In 2008, metro Toronto police charged prominent tennis coach John Turner, then aged 54, with sexually assaulting two of his teenage students in the early 1980s. Mr. Turner had been a coach at Sir Winston Churchill Park tennis club, where an online profile said he coached 33 national champions.
Claire Lyte, an LTA coach who had reached a ranking of 101 on the WTA women’s pro tour, was sentenced in November 2007 for two years and 9 months for having a sexual relationship with a 13-year-old girl for a year in their homes and in hotel rooms shared during tournaments. The girl’s mother reportedly found her daughter in bed having sex with Ms. Lyte, and a few months later went to police after her daughter threatened to kill herself. Judge Nigel Gilmour told Ms. Lyte: “You welcomed her attention and encouraged it, and then manipulated what had become her infatuation with you and did that for your own selfish sexual ends.” But half-way through her jail term, Ms. Lyte was release at age 30. She told British media that she was innocent.
A few years later in early 2012, parents were making detailed accusations about Dan Sanders. Richard Hughes, a chief police inspector, accused Mr. Sanders of bullying his daughter at the Wrexham Tennis Centre in Wales. The Guardian later reported that Mr. Hughes in 2012 met with Bob Moore, a director at WTC, and told him that, in his professional opinion as a police officer, Mr. Sanders fit the profile of a sexual predator.
But the Guardian reported that the Wrexham Tennis Center, Tennis Wales (the governing body for Tennis in Wales), and the LTA’s safeguarding team all allowed Mr. Sanders to continue as head coach at the WTC.
While this was going on, Tennis View Magazine on Dec. 28, 2013 posted their interview with Mr. Downey, who apparently made no mention of this child grooming scandal. Instead, Mr. Downey spoke about selling his house and saying farewell to Tennis Canada at board meetings and parties in order to embark on 5-year contract and a new life in London. He had also just taken a holiday in Jamaica with his new wife Jinder Chalmers after a romance that began on a plane en route to Vancouver.
Mr. Downey told Tennis View about his idyllic new life in leafy southwestern London. He was renting a three bedroom house in St. Margarets, across the river from Richmond, and near the LTA’s National Training Center. “It’s a really nice place and we love nature; it’s got a creek at the bottom of our backyard and ducks and everything else,” Mr. Downey said. “We just love all the green space all around Richmond.”
Mr. Downey also praised the “rich history” of tennis in Britain and the “historical prestige” of the LTA. “I looked at myself at nearly 56 years of age and said, what a grand opportunity to go and live in London to lead that storied organization, and at the same time be able to experience an altogether new culture and be so close to the rest of Europe. I’m pinching myself that I have this opportunity. I’m also pinching myself that the LTA would look across the ocean to hockey-mad Canada to find its next CEO. I think it reflects so favorably on this organization and the stature of tennis in Canada.”
He also said that he wanted to close his tenure at Tennis Canada with excellence. “So I really tried to finish a lot of projects that I started, like contracts with Milos Raonic and Eugenie Bouchard. I believed you’re remembered by how you left and not just what you did. So I really focused on trying to leave with a sense of pride that the organization’s in good shape.”
In the interview, Mr. Downey also boasted that Tennis Canada’s spending on “development” increased from roughly $3 million to $12 million during his tenure. “Financially we’ve been really strong and invested wisely, especially in high performance. That’s what I’m most proud about. It all starts with culture, and we have more of an orientation towards results. Success breeds success.”
http://www.tennisviewmag.com/tennis-view-magazine/article/michael-downey-lands-london-lead-lta
A few days later in January 2014, with Mr. Downey now in charge of the Lawn Tennis Association, a parent sent a letter to the LTA’s “safeguarding team” accusing coach Dan Sanders of bullying his daughter for two years. “I feel Wrexham is a bomb waiting to go off if coaches are allowed to get away with the issues I have mentioned and if everybody, including the LTA, wants to bury their head in the sand, then on your heads be it.”
The father, who had been complaining for two years about alleged abuse, accused Mr. Sanders of controlling and manipulating his daughter to the point where she cried before training and wanted to quit tennis. “It is my opinion nothing will get done about the way Wrexham is being run,” the father wrote in the letter quoted by the Guardian. “Dan will still go around with his cocky attitude and the LTA will brush everything under the carpet.”
Two months later, the LTA safeguarding team, now under the lead of Mr. Downey, sent the father a letter saying: “Thank you for raising these concerns and please be assured the LTA works to promote the safety and welfare of all children and young people. We will be taking your comments on board and seeing where we can provide support for Wrexham Tennis Academy in this area of work.”
But the Guardian reported that the LTA under Mr. Downey allowed Mr. Sanders to remain in place at Wrexham Tennis Centre for a further two years and nine months until Mr. Sanders was arrested for having sex with an underage player in his office and elsewhere. The LTA under Mr. Downey even gave Mr. Sanders approval to travel to tournaments overseas as the coach of an underage girl.
Meanwhile, tennis media throughout 2014 toasted the success of Mr. Downey and Tennis Canada for “developing” Milos Raonic and Genie Bouchard. The year 2014 was, at that time, Canada’s best ever in tennis. Ms. Bouchard, who grew up between Florida and wealthy Westmount in Montreal, rose quickly up the rankings with her brash shotmaking and glamorous presence. She reached the semi-finals at the Australian Open in Melbourne and Roland Garros in Paris. Then, with London media abuzz about her, Ms. Bouchard beat Andrea Petkovic, Alizé Cornet, Angelique Kerber and Simona Halep to reach the finals at Wimbledon.
But on the eve of the Wimbledon final, the Daily Mail reported that Ms. Bouchard had severed her longtime friendship with Laura Robson over a spat about their Florida-based coach Nick Saviano. “The new face of women’s tennis — who will be fighting to be crowned Wimbledon champion today — likes to post pictures of herself lounging seductively in bikinis and pouting in fancy dress,” wrote Alison Boshoff in the Daily Mail. “She was once best friends with British tennis hope Laura Robson, who is also 20. They met aged nine and were inseparable for a decade. They were once so close that Canadian Bouchard stayed with Robson at her family home near the All England Club when they played there. But there has been an acrimonious falling out. Asked yesterday if they were still close, Bouchard responded bluntly: ‘No. I don’t think so,’ adding ‘I’m sure you guys can figure out that one . . . I’ll leave it at that.”
The next day, Czech lefty Petra Kvitova whipped Ms. Bouchard in the Wimbledon final 6-3, 6-0. Nevertheless, Ms. Bouchard was now the hottest thing in sports marketing.
A few weeks later, Canadian media created high expectations that Ms. Bouchard would win the Rogers Cup in her hometown of Montreal. But before her opening match against 113-ranked qualifier Shelby Rogers, strange things began to happen. The power went out that afternoon, and organizers had to use a generator to power the lights in Uniprix Stadium. Ms. Bouchard also seemed to lack electricity. She lost the first set 0-6 and looked shell-shocked. She briefly came alive to win the second set 6-2 but then got bageled again 0-6 in the third set, an embarrassment for Ms. Bouchard and tennis fans across Canada. “Eugenie Bouchard’s homecoming turned into a power shortage on and off the court,” said a Canadian Press report posted by the CBC. “Bouchard laid an egg on the court, spraying what are normally easy shots long and wide, with body language that suggested she’d rather crawl into a cave.”
It’s not clear what happened to Ms. Bouchard that day. “I’ve definitely noticed a change in my life since the beginning of the year, even more so since Wimbledon,” Ms. Bouchard told the press. “It’s just something I’m going to have to get used to. Especially coming to Montreal it is definitely a little crazier than any other tournament … I’ll just have to deal with it better.”
As it turned out, Ms. Bouchard’s career spiraled downward from there. She lost early in Cincinnati and New York to Svetlana Kuznetsova and Ekaterina Makarova. Then she “forgot” to enter the Hong Kong Open. The organizers, who based their ticket sales strategy around promoting the Golden Girl from Canada, offered Ms. Bouchard a wild card and appearance fees anyway. But Ms. Bouchard pulled out ahead of Hong Kong by claiming she was still suffering from “heat stroke” in New York. She ended the year by losing early at the WTA Finals. She then parted ways with her longtime coach Nick Saviano.
A year later at the 2015 US Open, Ms. Bouchard claimed that she slipped and fell on her head in a locker room after playing mixed doubles with Nick Kyrgios, a notorious womanizer who was noticeably “sweet” with Ms. Bouchard during the match. Ms. Bouchard later sued the United States Tennis Association for millions of dollars and agreed to an out-of-court settlement after refusing to divulge the details of her endorsement contracts, reportedly worth millions of dollars. She would soon drop out of the top 100 for several years and never regain her form of 2014.
Meanwhile, Milos Raonic served his way up the ranks of men’s tennis, all the way toward beating Roger Federer in 5-sets on grass to reach the 2016 Wimbledon final, where he lost to Andy Murray in straight sets. Canadian media at that time called it the greatest achievement ever for a Canadian tennis player.
But Canadian media also overlooked, or didn’t know about, alleged incidents during Mr. Raonic’s match in Miami and at Mr. Raonic’s house a year earlier during Wimbledon 2015. Stephanie Lopez, an agent at top Hollywood agency CAA from 2013 to 2018, later accused Mr. Raonic’s agent Amit Naor (a former tennis pro from Israel) of sexually assaulting her. While Ms. Lopez and other agents testified against Mr. Naor in Los Angeles Superior Court, Milos Raonic took a public stand in support of Mr. Naor, his agent since 2011.
“I know Amit, I know his character and I stand behind that,” Mr. Raonic said, according to the Telegraph. “I think it was something that was blown out of proportion with some ulterior motives from the story that I heard, and some people leaning a little too much on, let’s say, this cancel culture nowadays. The things that were being said about him I know not to be true.”
This outraged tennis fans and others who have long complained about mistreatment of women in sports. Minky Worden, director of global initiatives at Human Rights Watch, told the Telegraph: “This case reminds us of the extent to which sport has not reacted to ‘MeToo’ and has not put in place protection for athletes or addressed the issue of workplace rights. The result is that abuse survivors take a long time to come forward, whether that abuse is sexual, domestic, verbal or physical. Coming forward is all the more difficult when abusers are allowed to move around in sport.”
London-based athletes’ rights activist Payoshni Mitra added her own concerns. “Raonic trivializes the allegations by saying that he knows this man and is therefore unwilling to believe them,” Mitra told the Telegraph. “It is very common to be a bystander, especially when the one accused of crime is influential.”
Raonic’s comment also disturbed Stephanie Lopez, the agent. “I wish I could give Milos the benefit of the doubt and say it was just a careless comment,” Ms. Lopez told the Telegraph. “But it’s exactly what I’d expect someone to say who’s still working with Amit. Those who abuse their power don’t rise in a vacuum. They need followers to turn a blind eye.”
For years, activists have complained about tennis organizations, federations, players and others covering up a culture of sexual harassment, domestic violence and child abuse. They often accused media of complicity in this cover-up.
A few days after Ms. Bouchard’s loss in the 2014 Wimbledon final, the Daily Mail on July 20, 2014 reported that Jill Dando, a presenter for a TV show about crime, tried to get her bosses to investigate an alleged paedophile ring inside the BBC allegedly involving big name stars and BBC staff. She handed a file to senior management, but they took no action, the Daily Mail reported.
Later, Ms. Dando was shot in the head after stepping out of her car to enter her home in Fulham, west London, on April 26, 1999. Neighbors found her dead in a pool of blood. The Mail reported that a stuntman named Barry George was jailed in 2001 for the killing but was released 7 years later following the emergence of fresh evidence. Her killer has never been found.
The murder of Ms. Dando sent a chill through anyone who might want to blow the whistle on a powerful child molester, including in the tennis world.
Recently, however, more people have spoken out against abuse in tennis. In August 2022, French player Fiona Ferro accused her coach Pierre Bouteyre of allegedly raping her from 2012 to 2015, when she was between 15 and 18 years old. Prominent French player Alize Cornet, who was often coached by Mr. Bouteyre between 2002 and 2019, said it was “terrible” for both Ferro and Bouteyre, and especially for Ferro. After French police charged him, Mr. Bouteyre’s lawyer claimed it was a consensual love story. The case was reportedly still pending in court. After Ms. Ferro’s allegations, the WTA reportedly hired a lawyer as “director of safeguarding”.
In March 2023, two male players reportedly accused German coach Dirk Hordorff of sexual harassment. Maximilian Abel, who broke the world’s top 200 before failing a drugs test, accused Mr. Hordoff of asking him to do naked push-ups in Hordoff’s apartment and of lashing his buttocks with a belt while Mr. Abel sat on a bed in a “dog position”. “I was shocked, felt like shit,” said Abel.
Mr. Hordorff, who coached other ATP players including Wimbledon doubles champion Vasek Pospisil from western Canada, denied the allegations. The German Tennis Federation told German media that they could not prove the allegations with certainty, but they also suspended Mr. Hordorff from his role as the federation’s high performance coach.
While German media noted that the accuser, Mr. Abel, had been jailed for credit card fraud, another player made similar allegations. Sriram Balaji, a top 100 doubles player, also accused Mr. Hordorff of asking him to get naked when he was 20 years old. “He touched me all over my body, just not on my genitals,” said Balaji. “I had the feeling he wanted to treat me like his slave.”
In June 2023, Andy Murray’s mother Judy released a fictional novel “The Wild Card” about a woman named Abi and her love affair with a manipulative, narcissistic American coach who groomed her when she was only 16. Amid various rumours, it’s not known if Murray’s heroine is based on Laura Robson, who had a meteoric fall not long after winning a silver medal in mixed doubles with Judy’s son Andy at the 2012 London Olympics when Robson was only 18.
Judy Murray and her son Andy reportedly didn’t have the warmest relationship with Mr. Downey. Simon Briggs wrote in the Telegraph that Mr. Downey “barely managed a meeting” with Andy Murray.
The Guardian claimed that Murray was “unimpressed by Downey”, and he was “reluctant to endorse a body that has often appeared lumbering and complacent. Downey must feel acute disappointment and a sense of personal failure that he could not forge a decent working relationship with Murray.”
Mr. Murray said he wasn’t surprised that Mr. Downey quit his LTA post two years ahead of schedule. “Everyone thought that’s always what was going to happen there. They need someone that’s going to be in it for the long haul. They just have to have a 100% commitment to British tennis.”
Murray also criticized the Lawn Tennis Association for failing to capitalize on his success and develop tennis in Britain. He said Britain had lost 60,000 players in recent years. “I don’t understand how in the last eight to ten years that participation is dropping,” Mr. Murray said. “I don’t get it. I know in Scotland that there have not been many indoor courts built in the last ten years. That seems madness.”
Meanwhile, a profile of Mr. Downey in The Guardian in 2017 noted that Mr. Downey, in his first month leading Tennis Canada in 2004, didn’t recognize Roger Federer (the world’s most popular player) or the Davis Cup, the sport’s most prestigious team event. “Sometimes if you know too much you actually meddle too much,” Mr. Downey said.
But it seems that Mr. Downey was able to maintain a public standing in London at a time when Canadian media were reporting several high profile allegations of harassment regarding the Canadian Olympic Committee, which works with Tennis Canada officials to oversee Tennis Canada players and other athletes participating at Olympic Games around the world.
On Sept. 30, 2015, Marcel Aubut, a powerful Quebec lawyer and owner of the NHL”s Quebec Nordiques, resigned after five years as the head of the Canadian Olympic Committee due to allegations of harassment. The Canadian Olympic Committee then retained François Rolland, former chief justice of the Quebec Superior Court, as an independent investigator, the CBC reported.
A few months later on Jan. 13, 2016, the Globe and Mail reported that an independent probe found widespread allegations of harassment since at least 2008. “A majority of COC staff (from among about 140 who provided information) reported experiencing or witnessing harassment (both sexual and personal) during the president’s tenure, both inside and outside of the COC’s offices,” a summary of the report said.
The report, led by Toronto labour lawyer Christine Thomlinson, whose firm reviewed harassment accusations against former CBC host Jian Ghomeshi, also noted that non-COC staff reported seeing Mr. Aubut engaging in harassing behaviour when he was representing the COC.
“Clearly, we should have done better,” said Tricia Smith, who succeeded Mr. Aubut as president of the COC.
Montreal’s La Presse, meanwhile, reported on a letter to Mr. Aubut dated June 13, 2011. The letter detailed an allegation from an employee who demanded that Mr. Aubut refrain from touching, kissing and sexual innuendo.
In October 2017, Leanne Nicolle, the former executive director of the Canadian Olympic Foundation, went on Canadian network CTV to publicly accuse Mr. Aubut of demanding his staff work “crazy hours” at the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia, where he allegedly yelled at employees and “constantly” berated them to the point of breaking them.
Nicolle also accused Mr. Aubut of inappropriate “physical connection” such as “inappropriate hugging”. “My self-esteem was shattered … I was so scared. I was scared of him.” She also said her co-workers were being harassed and yelled at “all the time and living in constant fear of reprisal. Constant fear. Like the whole organization was based in fear.”
After stepping down in 2015, Mr. Aubut said: “Although I assume full responsibility for my effusive and demonstrative personality, I would like to reiterate that I never intended to offend or upset anyone with my remarks or my behaviour.”The allegations against Aubut were never tested in court.
Among other cases, a Quebec court in December 2017 sentenced Canadian high performance ski coach Bertrand Charest to 12 years in prison on conviction of 37 charges related to his exploitation and sexual assault of his female students.
Canadian hockey, meanwhile, has also been rocked by various sexual abuse scandals.
In contrast to other officials, Mr. Downey has enjoyed positive press in Canada, in part because Tennis Canada has its own media operations that fill a void for tennis coverage in Canada.
Upon announcing Mr. Downey’s retirement in February 2023, Tennis Canada’s official website hailed his “illustrious career”.
“Under his leadership, the organization has experienced success both on and off the court that is unparalleled in its 133-year history,” noted a press release. “Downey’s first term as President and CEO, from 2004 to 2013, saw him develop a bold plan to diversify and increase revenue generated by the National Bank Open presented by Rogers to reinvest in high performance and tennis development in Canada. In 2007, he prompted the Board of Directors to invest over $1 million annually in high performance which led to the formation of the National Tennis Centre presented by Rogers in Montreal and regional U14 programs in Toronto, Montreal and later Vancouver. The likes of Bianca Andreescu, Eugenie Bouchard, Milos Raonic and Félix Auger-Aliassime trained at the National Tennis Centre before graduating to the professional tours.”
In the article, Mr. Downey praised several top Canadian players, calling them by their first names Milos, Genie, Bianca, Denis and Felix. But he did not mention Francois Abanda, a former junior girls’ star who quit tennis amid allegations of discrimination and mistreatment. Mr. Downey also didn’t mention Filip Peliwo, a former junior Wimbledon and US Open champion, who left his native Vancouver to play for Poland instead of Canada.
There was also no mention of the tragic death of Bruno Agostinelli, a former ATP pro who coached children under age 14 at Tennis Canada’s national training center in Toronto. Mr. Agostinelli, then age 28, died when his motorcycle collided with a vehicle around 6:30 pm in Vaughan (near the family homes of Milos Raonic and Denis Shapovalov) after a coaching session at Tennis Canada’s headquarters in the north end of Toronto in March 2016.
“Michael has championed Tennis Canada through major growth periods for both our tennis development and commercial businesses and he successfully steered the organization through the turbulence of the COVID-19 pandemic,” commented Peter Kruyt, Chair of Tennis Canada’s Board of Directors, former Chairman of the Canada China Business Council from 2003 to 2018, and former chairman of Montreal’s Concordia University from 2005 to 2012.
“Under his leadership, we have helped develop Canadian players to win multiple junior Grand Slams and, for the first time ever, a Canadian singles player won the US Open and our very own National Bank Open presented by Rogers. Last November, Team Canada won the Davis Cup for the first time in our history, lending credence to our vision that Canada become a world-leading tennis nation. Thanks to Michael, Tennis Canada has never been in better shape, nor had a better management team than today, and we are grateful to him for this legacy.”
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