Stan Wild on British Gymnastics list of barred coaches

It is the first time the sport's national governing body has made generally public the names of those it has banned or expelled.

Stan Wild, who founded York City Gymnastics Club in 1974, competed for Britain 26 times, including at the Mexico Olympic Games in 1968, Munich Olympic Games in 1972 and World and European Championships.

Hundreds of past and present members of his club cheered him on as he carried the Olympic torch along Rougier Street in central York in 2012 during the Flame’s UK tour en route to the London Olympic Games.

But eight years later, he was kicked out of the sport after police investigated allegations against him.  He was never charged with a criminal offence. 

British Gymnastics held a disciplinary hearing and decided he should no longer be part of its activities in any role. He had been suspended from the sport for five years.

The York Press reported his expulsion in 2021. At that tme British Gymnastics did not provide any public means by which would-be and current gymnasts and their families could know that he was barred.

Now, as part of the governing body’s major internal reforms following the Whyte Report into its safeguarding practices, the board has published a list  in the public section of its website of all the coaches and judges banned or expelled from the sport.

Sport England and UK Sport commissioned the report after gymnasts elsewhere in the country, including international medal-winners, complained of behaviour against them while practising their sport.

The online list states that Mr Wild had been a gymnastics coach and judge and that he was expelled for life from December 10, 2020.

Expulsion is the gymnastic equivalent of being struck off from a professional register such as those for medics, lawyers and teachers. Anyone expelled from the sport, according to British Gymnastics, can apply to rejoin the sport five years after their expulsion begins. They have to satisfy the governing body’s board that it would be right for their expulsion to end.

Stan Wild in his competing days

The list includes coaches and judges who were expelled as long ago as 1994  and those who have been banned for a stated period of time. Many of those included, like Mr Wild, were sanctioned as part of what British Gymnastics describes as a “safeguarding investigation”.

Others were sanctioned because they got a criminal conviction or were subjected to an unspecified disciplinary hearing.

There are no details on the list of where the sanctioned coaches and judges lived, worked or any of the clubs or gymnastic organisations with which they were associated. The most recent expulsion included is one of June 1 this year.