Yannick Agnel indicted for rape and sexual assault on a minor – Release

Bonnet on the head and mask on the face, Yannick Agnel spent Saturday from the premises of the police to the court of Mulhouse. The former swimmer and two-time Olympic champion was indicted at the end of the day for rape and assault on a minor, we learned from a judicial source on Saturday. The Mulhouse prosecutor’s office had requested that he be placed in pre-trial detention but the liberties and detention judge left him free and placed under judicial control.

Arrested Thursday in Paris, the athlete, retired from the pools since 2016, was heard for more than 48 hours as part of an investigation into “Rape and sexual assault on a minor of 15 years”, facts punishable by 20 years of criminal imprisonment.

According to the team, several swimmers or former swimmers have been heard in recent weeks on this case. The facts go back to “Approximately 2016”, according to the Mulhouse prosecutor’s office.

That year, Agnel has been training for two years at the Mulhouse Olympic Swimming (MON) under the leadership of Lionel Horter, after a brief exile in the United States. It is one of the daughters of his ex-trainer who lodged a complaint during the summer of 2021. She was 13 years old at the time of the facts, Agnel of 24.

The French Swimming Federation (FFN) does not rule out being a civil party. The Minister of Sports, Roxana Maracineanu, herself passed by the Mulhouse swimming club when she was a swimmer, declared to follow this affair closely.

“That other children no longer have to undergo this”

“It is an instruction which is taking its course and must follow its course, the young girl’s complaint is in the hands of justice and she must go to the end”, she said on Saturday in Val-d’Isère, where she follows the events of the Alpine Skiing World Cup.

“This is a very important subject for me at national level, it is a fight that we carry at European and international level. […] May the word be free, […] it is essential so that other children no longer have to undergo this ”, she added.

Yannick Agnel has one of the finest records in French swimming: he was double Olympic champion in London in 2012 (in the 200m freestyle and the 4x100m relay), before being crowned world champion in these two disciplines in 2013. The second part of his career will be more complicated. After falling out with his coach and mentor Fabrice Pellerin in 2013, he went into exile in the United States. Without success. He returned to France a year later, to Mulhouse therefore, but would no longer be able to add an additional line to his list and will retire in 2016, after the Rio Games.

Since then, Yannick Agnel has notably become a consultant for France Télévisions in 2019. He commented on the swimming events for the channel during the Tokyo Olympics this summer. He has also invested in e-sport: he is sports director of a club and, for a few months, columnist for France Info, which has announced that it is suspending its collaboration with him.

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