The CEO of a major track timing company was charged with child abuse and continued to attend track events and work in the sport for nearly a year after.
Daniel Bowdoin worked for Athletic, a business whose timing and results services are ubiquitous in the running world. He served as CEO of AthleticTIMING, the company’s timing arm, and COO of AthleticNET, its results, team, and event management platform. (He was not involved with RunnerSpace, the company’s media arm.)
The state of Oregon is bringing five charges against Bowdoin: rape in the first degree, two charges of sodomy in the first degree, unlawful sexual penetration in the first degree, and sexual abuse in the first degree.
The charges were first presented on Nov. 27, 2024, and a judge ordered that Bowdoin have no contact with the victim, who court documents say was between four and seven years old at the time of the alleged abuse. For nearly a full year, Bowdoin continued to work in track and attended a small number of meets without Athletic, USA Track & Field, SafeSport, or others hearing about the charges until recently. (Those meets did not include minors, Athletic told Front Office Sports.) Bowdoin’s case became more widely known after an anonymous post on the LetsRun message board on Thursday.
Athletic didn’t hear about Bowdoin’s legal issues until October 18, 2025, according to a company spokesperson.
“Although the individual was arraigned on those charges in January, the company had no prior knowledge of the matter,” the spokesperson said. “Upon learning of the charges, the employee was immediately placed on administrative leave pending further review.”
As of October 27, Bowdoin is no longer with the company.
Bowdoin’s brother David is AthleticNET’s Chief Product Officer, and formerly served as its CEO. He remains with the company.
FOS obtained records from Marion County Circuit Court laying out the allegations in the case. The five counts against Bowdoin detail five separate incidents with the same victim, identified as E.B, all occurring between Jan. 1, 2021 and Dec. 31, 2023. The district attorney alleges that Bowdoin engaged E.B. in sexual intercourse and twice in oral sexual intercourse, penetrated her vagina with his fingers, and touched her vagina.
Bowdoin’s attorney, Daniel Lounsbury, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
The case has escalated over the last two weeks. On Oct. 29, the deputy district attorney filed a motion to revoke Bowdoin’s release agreement, saying he violated it by having contact with minors. She included as evidence a confidential Oct. 28 report from the Washington County Sheriff’s Office. (FOS has requested a copy.) A new warrant was issued for Bowdoin’s arrest, and he turned himself in on Nov. 2, court records show. He is being held on a $1 million bond and is regarded in court documents as a “danger to public.” The jail’s website showed on Friday that he is still in custody.
A three-day jury trial is scheduled for April 14, 2026.
Bowdoin Released
In January, weeks after the district attorney first brought charges, he and temporary Judge Michael Wu signed off on a release agreement. As part of that agreement, Bowdoin was to have no contact with E.B., “minors or where they congregate.”
On Feb. 20, Lounsbury filed a motion to amend the release agreement to allow Bowdoin to “perform work as a meet director at track meets.” The motion proposed that Bowdoin would only work “without a chaperone” at collegiate meets, and would have designated supervisors at any meets with minors present.
Bowdoin filed a three-page declaration in support of the motion. He began by detailing the situation, saying he self-reported the case and has been “actively engaged in counseling” before and after doing so. (Other court documents say the victim and Bowdoin’s wife first raised accusations, after which Bowdoin self-reported.) Bowdoin acknowledged his position at Athletic: “I work for a company that helps facilitate track and field events as well as the timing and measurement of events from middle school up to collegiate levels.” He says he has been “outsourcing many of my work responsibilities,” but needs clarification ahead of track season.
Specifically, Bowdoin wanted to know whether he could work at college meets, which he said sometimes are attended by athletes under 18 years of age. Bowdoin said he would mainly be in the press box or working with equipment on the infield of the track, and he said he would have a “male chaperone with me at all times.” Bowdoin listed two people—his therapist and a friend—who “are aware of my self disclosure and will be in my immediate presence 100 per cent of the time when I am working.”
Bowdoin also described the upcoming 270-team “Middle School Meet of Champions,” for which he was the meet director. “It will be a hardship on many others if I can not be present. Once again, at this event I will have a male chaperone,” he wrote.
Bowdoin said that Athletic “handles 500 events this year,” and laid out the seven meets that “critically require my attendance in order to keep good standing in the company and to facilitate what would be a nearly impossible hand off of my duties.” The list included the Oregon High School State Track and Field Championships, Nike’s high school national championship—where more than 5,000 athletes participate—and several college events. Bowdoin wrote that two of the events would include middle school-aged runners, and three would include high schoolers.
On March 14, the court held a hearing for the state’s objection to the motion before Judge J. Channing Bennett. A court document recapping the meeting said that Bennett denied the motion—a decision officially filed a few days later—then warned Bowdoin that he would not have let him out on release and that he wasn’t sure how he was out on these charges.
A spokesperson for Athletic tells FOS: “To the best of our knowledge, the employee only attended four events in 2025, none featuring minor-aged participants.”
FOS reached out to the four collegiate-only meets listed in Bowdoin’s letter to the court. Southern Oregon University confirmed Bowdoin worked the Cascade Conference Championships held at its campus in May, which Athletic has timed for several years. The University of Oregon said no university employee or direct contractor has Bowdoin’s name, and deferred to Athletic. The Cascade Conference, Oregon State, and Oregon Institute of Technology did not immediately respond.
Stakeholders in the Dark
USATF, the sport’s governing body in the United States, only learned of the charges this week, according to its spokesperson. USATF called the allegations against Bowdoin “reprehensible,” and said he has not been credentialed by the governing body to attend an event since 2023.
“While USATF engages with Athletic.net as a vendor, our relationship is with that organization and not any specific employees of the organization,” USATF said in its statement. “USATF takes the safety of its constituents extremely seriously. We are committed to ensuring individuals doing business with this federation are subject to meticulous background checks annually and annual certification from the U.S. Center for SafeSport. The most recent background check on Mr. Bowdoin was completed prior to these charges being made public.”
SafeSport is the body created by Congress in the wake of the Larry Nassar scandal to prevent child and sexual abuse in Olympic sports. By longstanding policy, the organization does not comment on individual cases. But it seems apparent they were not aware of Bowdoin’s case despite his stature in the sport. A SafeSport spokesperson said that a criminal sexual abuse charge violates SafeSport code and would appear on the organization’s disciplinary database. Bowdoin’s name did not appear in the database until late Friday afternoon, which says he was issued a temporary suspension on Friday for “allegations of misconduct.”
The Oregon School Activities Association, which oversees high school sports in the state, did not immediately return a request for comment.
A spokesperson for Nike, which hosts the large national championship meet timed by Athletic, said the company found out about the allegations on Nov. 6, the same day as the LetsRun post.
“While we were informed [Athletic] took actions, we will be ensuring we understand how this situation occurred, how it is being addressed (beyond the actions taken), and what is being done to prevent it from happening in the future,” the company said in a statement. “We are firmly committed to providing a safe sport environment and we’re unwavering in this pursuit.”
