Olympic sailor’s former coach sentenced to six years in sex abuse case

A court in San Isidro has sentenced the former coach of Olympic sailing medallist Eugenia Bosco to six and a half years in prison for sexual abuse, a judicial source said on Friday.

Leandro Tulia worked for more than two decades at the Yacht Club Olivos, north of Buenos Aires, where Bosco trained alongside other children aged between six and 15.

Tulia remained in his position until February this year, when he was arrested. Oral Court No. 3 of San Isidro convicted on three counts of “simple sexual abuse aggravated by a position of guardianship” involving minors and the sentence was subsequently handed down.

“I don’t know how to explain it, but it was something that happened, something I couldn’t control. I was 11 or 12, and I pushed it out of my life until a couple of years ago, when I was able to face it,” Bosco, now aged 28, told the La Nación newspaper at the beginning of 2025 in an interview, when she made the case public.

Bosco spoke out two months after winning a silver medal in the Nacra 17 class alongside Mateo Majdalani at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.

After the Olympic medallist broke her silence, other victims came forward to report abuse by Tulia.

Because Bosco’s home town of San Pedro, in the north of Buenos Aires Province, was more than 150 kilometres from the yacht club, she and other underage children would sleep at the Olivos institution under Tulia’s care.

“Things develop within a small circle that perhaps we didn’t control, and that person had everything very tightly controlled. Then, years later, when you’re older, you start to see it … gestures, situations, moments,” Bosco recalled in her interview.

Bosco’s complaint of sexual abuse was deemed beyond the statue of limitations because it involved an incident that occurred before 2011. , but her courage encouraged three other former students of Tulia to come forward. It was because of these complaints that the now 54-year-old former coach was arrested in February, and his sentence is expected to be announced in December.

Case prosecutor Lidia Osores Soler previously told the AFP news agency that at least six women had filed complaints, although the conviction was secured only on three incidents reported by two victims.

Bosco’s complaint of sexual abuse, and one from another victim, was deemed beyond the statue of limitations because they involved incidents that occurred before 2011.

The conviction was secured on the grounds of the three other denunciations. 

"The statute of limitations does not allow for criminal prosecution, but it does not constitute a form of erasure of the memory of someone who has suffered a harmful event," the court stated regarding this matter.

– TIMES/AFP