Brett Sutton

Sutton has expressed the desire to retire from coaching in 2015 in order to focus on his projects that are geared towards social change. He has started projects through teamTBB, such as TriCozumel, that locally promote youth exercise and as well as avoiding obesity and a life of drug use.

Siri Lindley, coach of 2010 and 2013 Ironman world champion Mirinda Carfrae, was coached by Sutton from 4th place to win two World Cups and an ITU World Championship. In January 2011, she described Sutton as, in her opinion, "the best coach in the world", adding, "He is an incredible man, and deserves nothing but the utmost respect for the incredible work he has achieved."

Athletes can shorten their careers, believes Sutton, by trying to break records in Ironman races. He said, "I've seen plenty of people bust themselves and have bad seasons because they're chasing records." and "This sport is the ultimate tough test, each race hurts your body so much at the top level." Referring to Chrissie Wellington's world record in Roth, her subsequent withdrawal from the 2010 world championships in Kona, and M-dot world record six weeks later, he commented, "To drive it to the edge of oblivion when you have a 20-minute lead is complete negligence. It has cost her dearly last season, but there we were busting it again for the triathlon fraternity by the end of the season." He added, "Ironman is not a 200 m freestyle swim event, it is a body shattering nine hours. We have always treated it with respect. When you have the win you shut it down and work on recovery for the next battle. We both agree to disagree and that is what I most like about Chrissie. We could discuss everything and no recriminations after, it's one of her many strengths."

In response to criticism, Chrissie Wellington wrote that she did her "due diligence" before her trial week in January 2007 with Sutton's squad. She stated that "child abuse is a serious crime and one which personally revolts me to the core of my being. And I speak from experience", and said that her decision about Sutton was "based on evidence I gathered, both from Brett and from other athletes who were present at the time the incident took place. I did this, and also spoke at length to the rest of the team about his past. This coupled with my own gut feeling about Brett as a man and as a coach led me to accept the offer of a place on the team."

Sutton took up boxing in his early 20s. After training dogs and horses, Sutton returned to swim coaching, and became a nationally qualified swimming coach. His appointment as coach to the Australian national triathlon team was controversial, as he had not been to college, nor had he any formal training. Rob Pickard, the high-performance manager of Triathlon Australia before the 2000 Olympics said, "I wasn't on the panel that appointed him, but I was glad it did." He added that unfavourable rumours that Sutton "destroyed" and "brutalised" his athletes were started around the same time by rival coaches, jealous of his appointment. Sutton said, "I have no respect for the coaches who haven't paid their dues. In swimming, coaches work their way up over a 15-year time span. From the age of 15, I was coaching all the time."

Les McDonald, then president of the ITU, said that triathletes who continued to be coached by Sutton should be thrown out of their national teams. In August 2000, the year following the trial, Dan Empfield wrote that Sutton had

Some athletes have experienced criticism for joining Sutton's squad, or have actually been discriminated against as a result of doing so. In May 2000, Sutton wrote, "The sport does not have the right, either morally or legally, to persecute athletes who have done nothing wrong", outlining discrimination against Loretta Harrop, whom he described as the "undisputed best in the world", Andrew Johns ("the best human being alive"), Siri Lindley ("one of nature's kindest") and Joanne King, who won the 1998 world championship, but remained largely ignored because of her association with Sutton. He referred to ITU chief Les McDonald throwing Lindley's winning flowers at her, "along with some obscenities, at the very moment for which she had dreamed for only God knows how long."

In 1999, he pleaded guilty in an Australian court to five sexual offences committed in the late 1980s against a teenage girl swimmer whom he was coaching. After the trial, in which he was given a suspended sentence, he was banned for life from coaching in Australia, and Sutton's marriage ended in divorce. Sutton later remarried, and is now based in Leysin, Switzerland, where he lives with his Swiss wife Fiona and their two daughters.

In 1999, Sutton pleaded guilty in an Australian court to five sex offences against a girl swimmer. He committed the first offence in the late 1980s, when the girl was 14 years old, and he was her coach. The judge said that Sutton had "interfered with her sexually in a gross and disgraceful way" and "abused [his] role to an inexcusable degree". Sutton was given a two-year sentence which was suspended partly because, in the words of the judge, "a large number of leading athletes will suffer disadvantage from your absence from the scene". Reporter Steven Downes believes that Sutton escaped jail because the judge did not want to cost Australia any Olympic medals. After the trial, Sutton was banned for life from coaching in Australia, and Sutton's marriage ended in divorce.

He is sceptical of gadgets such as power meters and heart rate monitors, and prefers instead to draw on his experience as a swim coach and as a trainer of greyhounds and racehorses. Greg Bennett, whom Sutton coached in the late 1990s and who become an Olympian and double World Cup winner, said, "He has learned how to read animals that are fatigued", a skill which, Bennett says, enables Sutton to push athletes to the limit, but not over it. Sutton regards interval training as a very important part of his programmes, saying, "If it's not long, it's got to be hard." He is infamous for his "black days", such as "Black Wednesday"s, when he requires a seemingly endless succession of hard intervals, or of other very hard sessions. The value of these sessions lies, in Chrissie Wellington's view, in psychological toughening.

Ben Bright, now coaching in England, was coached by Sutton in the 1990s and represented New Zealand in the 2000 Olympics. He said, "Because of his background in training horses and dogs in his early years he looks at the animal rather than the person when coaching a session. A person can lie to you and tell you they are feeling something they are not to get the outcome they desire. The animal can't do that, so he sees exactly what is going on and whether he needs to adjust the session he has planned. He also instills a belief within the athlete that they can achieve their goals ... Brett takes away the doubt and just gives them a task to focus on and that helps them keep a clear mind when competing."

Brett Sutton (born 16 May 1959) is an Australian triathlon coach and a former professional boxer, boxing coach, greyhound trainer, racehorse trainer and swimming coach, who is the head coach of Trisutto.com. Before setting up Trisutto.com, he was head coach of the triathlon team teamTBB.