IOWA CITY, Iowa — The U.S. gymnastics world was just recovering from a devastating sexual abuse scandal when a promising young coach moved from south Mississippi to Iowa to take a job in 2018 at an elite academy known for training Olympic champions.

Sean Gardner coached some of the most promising girls at Chow’s Gymnastics and Dance Institute in West Des Moines, Iowa. The club’s owner, Liang “Chow” Qiao, also thought highly enough of Gardner to put him in charge of a premier junior event.

But four years later, Gardner was gone from Chow’s with little notice.

USA Gymnastics, the organization rocked by the Larry Nassar sex-abuse crisis that led to the creation of the U.S. Center for SafeSport, had been informed by the watchdog group that Gardner was placed on its website’s banned list and

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