Gareth O'Callaghan: How disgraced Olympic coach George Gibney escaped prosecution — until now

Irish Examiner

19-07-2025

Give a man a whistle and a stopwatch and he assumes a position of authority. Bestow on him a reputation for achieving outstanding results, and his status of reverence becomes unquestionable. Trust the safety of your children to him and he commands total dominance.
Nothing could better describe the level of god-like fear and control that George Gibney once wielded over his swimmers than to feel those dark soulless eyes trained on you as you took your position on the starting block.
Once he blew the whistle, you knew he was scrutinising your every movement. What few realised for almost 30 years was that he had other plans besides places on the winner's podium. Gibney believed he was inscrutable.
Everyone dreams at some point of taking part in the Olympics, and Gibney sold that dream of becoming a swimming superstar to prepubertal youngsters, and to their proud impressionable parents.
Back in the early 1980s, Gibney had become a coaching virtuoso in the world of swimming which, up until then, had little appeal to Irish athletes. It was a sport with no resources, no decent pools, and no political support.
Gibney changed all that. Unlike other coaches, he had studied the science of sport and quickly started to get results that were unheard of
He was appointed head coach of the 1984 and 1988 Irish Olympic swimming teams. When he wasn't coaching or travelling the world with his young stars, he courted the media. He became RTÉ's resident swimming panellist during the Barcelona Olympics, and an all-round celebrity pundit.
Former Irish swimming coach George Gibney in 1988.
He wore his status on his sleeve, with his unmistakable booming poolside voice, his year-round tan, and his penchant for classy sports fashion and designer clothes he brought back from his regular trips to Florida.
According to Justine McCarthy, in her book Deep Deception, 'he kept a well-thumbed copy of How To Make Friends and Influence People within arm's reach in his office, embracing the essential ethos between its covers that pleasing others is the most effective route to success'.
Courting influential people became Gibney's doorstep to success. He nurtured friendships with the rich and famous through the clubs he was associated with, based on Dublin's wealthy southside, ingratiating himself with his swimmers' parents, who included leading accountants and lawyers, some of whom were cultural icons in Dublin society.
Such was his persuasive power, he even landed an audience with Charles Haughey in 1989 to make an argument for a 50-metre pool he'd dreamt off since he started coaching. Spread across the taoiseach's desk were drawings, graphs, projections and a costly video he had commissioned to sell his pitch.
Haughey gave him half an hour, then waved him off with that familiar smile, signifying his trademark indifference.
But he refused to quit. Perhaps it was his arrogance, and his relentless pursuit of excellence in his swimmers to strive to be even better that became his decoy. Despite all the eminent people he associated with on his climb to fame, none of them would have believed that he was a cause celebre in another secret entity.
Prosecution
His double life was finally halted in April 1993, when the DPP gave the instruction to commence a prosecution against him. He was arrested and charged with 27 counts of indecent assault and unlawful carnal knowledge of young swimmers under the age of 15.
Just when it appeared that he would finally face trial, his legal team applied in July 1993 in the High Court for a judicial review preventing the DPP from proceeding with the prosecution.
They argued that the years that had elapsed since the alleged offences, and the delay in the start of a prosecution, compromised their client's right to a fair trial.
Following a refusal by the High Court to stop the DPP from proceeding with the charges, Gibney appealed the decision to the Supreme Court, arguing that the claims were too old and that he didn't possess records from when the earliest allegations were made. He would have no documentation to base his defence on.
The law ruled in his favour. He walked out of court an innocent man.
Only 24 hours later, Gibney was being interviewed in Edinburgh for the job of chief coach at Warrender Baths Club, Scotland's premier swimming club.
When asked about rumours of a sexual abuse allegation back in Dublin, he fired back that the incident had occurred 25 years before, when he was a teenager. Polite, well-dressed and pleasant, were the impressions of the panel. He got the job.
Gardaí in Dublin, fuming over how his case had been terminated here, tipped off their Scottish colleagues about the charges that had been dismissed. Warrender sacked him, horrified by what they were told.
New life in the US
On the move again, he flew to the States. In May 1995, he was hired as a coach in Arvada, Colorado, for the North Jeffco Swim Team, but within months news of his past had followed him across the Atlantic, signalling the end of his coaching career.
How he got into the States on a Green Card is still shrouded in mystery. A Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit taken in 2015 by US journalist and author Irvin Muchnick against the Department of Homeland Security resulted in 2017 in partial access to Gibney's US immigration files. Muchnick has diligently pursued Gibney's deportation for over 10 years.
Among the documents released was a 'certificate of character' given to Gibney by the gardaí to support his visa application, dated and stamped January 20, 1992 — at a time when his victims were already speaking publicly. The document certified he had no criminal record.
Gibney's US citizenship application was rejected while he was living in Florida in 2010. So why was he permitted to remain living in the States?
According to Denver newspaper The Gazette this week, those FOIA documents also contain a letter from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official stating Gibney was not 'removable' because he had never been convicted of a crime. By then, he must have felt like the cat with nine lives.
Breakwater Drive in Altamonte Springs is a sleepy hamlet of low-sized condos, about a 15-minute drive from Orlando. A low crime rate, a pleasant year-round climate, and an affordable cost of living make this small city a nice place to retire to.
So it came as a shock to locals in the early hours of July 1 when the US Marshall's Service swooped on the sleepy backwater, complete with bullhorns and weapons drawn. They had arrived to arrest one of their reclusive neighbours, George Gibney.
Ten days later, the 77-year-old appeared before US Magistrate Judge Daniel Irick in a wheelchair, wearing a blue jumpsuit, his feet bandaged. Since then, he has agreed to be extradited back home, where he will face 79 charges in connection with the alleged abuse of four girls, including one charge of attempted rape, related to dates between 1971 and 1981.
For a man who flew the Atlantic often, enjoying the first-class trappings of his success, his first journey back in 30 years to face four women who, as innocent children, believed he could make them sporting heroes, will no doubt be spent reflecting on how his past finally caught up on him.
I hope those women know they are already heroes.
Read More
Justice may finally catch up to George Gibney, the man Irish swimming tried to forget