IF SUTTON WEREN'T a famous coach, my guess is that his long-ago crime might be forgotten by now. But it will always be there, and there are people who think he still doesn't belong in the sport. Richie Cunningham, a professional triathlete from Australia, says, "I would never be coached by the guy. I guess for some it's OK to sell your soul, as long as you end up winning." After Wellington's win, Nikola Tosic, a Serbia-based triathlete and blogger, posted a picture of her with a speech balloon pasted in, which has her saying, "I want to thank my coach, Brett Sutton, a convicted child molester." Tosic didn't know about Sutton until Ironman coverage prompted him to search the Web. On his blog he wrote, "Brett Sutton is a convicted sexual abuser of children. For some super crazy lucky reason he is not serving a life sentence or something like that."

No one has disputed the basic facts surrounding Sutton's past: He had a sexual relationship with a girl under 16. The girl (whose name has never been made public) grew up and changed sports. When the scandal finally broke, 11 years later, she was married to a triathlon coach named Spot Anderson. They have since divorced.

Recently, I spoke with Anderson about how and why the episode eventually came to light. "Sutton was asking me if I wanted to be an assistant coach for the national team," he recalled. Anderson wasn't interested in coaching elites, but the offer prompted a discussion about Sutton with his wife. "Then she told me the story," Anderson said.

Anderson called Rob Pickard, then a performance manager for the Australian national triathlon team. "I knew Spot pretty well and listened," Pickard says. "I said, ‘Well, Spot, if you're that concerned, why are you telling me? If it's true, you should tell the police.' "

In 1997, three years before the start of the 2000 Games in Sydney, Sutton was running a swim clinic at the Australian Institute of Sport when police showed up and arrested him. Against the backdrop of triathlon's Olympic debut, the emotionally gripping story swept the Australian media, generating headlines like DREAM COACH ADMITS SEX WITH GIRL.

Sutton was charged with ten counts of what, in Australia, is called "indecent dealings" with a minor. Anderson says he pressed for a rape charge, which carries a stiffer penalty, but the police dismissed this after their investigation. In the end, Sutton pleaded guilty to six counts of indecent dealings. But his position has been that, even though the sex shouldn't have happened, it was consensual. When he talked about the case later, he went on the offensive.

"Everyone yelled it was rape, but it wasn't rape at all," he told one Australian reporter. "I was never going to, under any circumstances, plead guilty to rape or anything like that. I wanted the charges changed to something more appropriate, and they did that."

At one point during my e-mail correspondence with Sutton, I asked him to verify certain details about the three-year sanctions he was supposed to serve. He took that as a cue to rail against that penalty one more time. "The whole situation was a farce," he replied. "They could cancel my registration, with their organizations, legally. They could do absolutely nothing more. The barring and stuff was all fantasy on their behalf."

The takeaway? Sutton is sorry in some ways, defiant in others. If he wanted to, he could show up at Kona this month, clipboard in hand, but I don't think he will. Instead he'll stay in the limbo zone, sending athletes out there to make his statements for him.