'Missing' English Commonwealth gold medalist found jailed in Morocco for sexual assault of a minor

'Missing' English Commonwealth gold medalist found jailed in Morocco for sexual assault of a minor

Leon Baptiste, the 41-year-old English athletics coach and 200m gold medallist at the 2010 Commonwealth Games, has been handed a 10-month custodial sentence in Morocco for the sexual assault of a minor. The revelation puts an end to weeks of speculation surrounding his whereabouts, after media reports over the weekend described him as "missing" following his apparent vanishing in the North African country. Baptiste was named England Athletics Coach of the Year at the 2023 Sporting Equals Awards, beating Ruth Eytle from HoopsB4Work and football manager Darren Moore to the prize. Baptiste had been working as a consultant sprinting coach for UK Athletics, guiding a group of elite British track athletes ahead of this summer's Commonwealth Games and European Championships. He ceased all communication more than three months ago, leaving both the governing body and the sprinters under his tutelage entirely in the dark about his situation. In May, Baptiste sent a brief message to the athletes he was training, informing them he would be away from sessions "for a while." No further explanation was forthcoming. The group of sprinters he had been preparing for major championship competition were left without their coach at a critical juncture in the season. UK Athletics, which had engaged him in a consultancy capacity, was equally unable to account for his absence. Weekend press coverage portrayed the former Commonwealth champion as having disappeared under mysterious circumstances in Morocco. It has since emerged that Baptiste had travelled to Marrakech alongside three other former British athletes, all of whom subsequently returned home. The BBC reported that a source at the Moroccan Ministry of Justice confirmed that Baptiste was taken into custody in Marrakech in May, subsequently found guilty, and is now incarcerated at Al-Oudaya prison. The source dismissed reports of a disappearance as misleading, stating: "The foreign national concerned had not lost contact wit