2 S’pore Muay Thai Athletes Complained About National Coach’s Abusive & Unfair Conduct

Two muay thai athletes, Lena Tan and Bryan Tee, have filed separate complaints against their team manager Robert Yap.

They made their complaints to the Safe Sport Commission, which was established in 2019 by SportsSG, to handle the education, prevention and report management relating to harassment and misconduct in Singapore sports.  

The Misdemeanours Against Lena Tan

Ms Lena Tan, aged 35, alleged that she was unfairly dropped from the national team and the 2022 SEA Games in Hanoi.

Consequently, she had appealed against her exclusion from the games, but her re-assessment was conducted in an unsafe and abusive manner by the Singapore Muay Thai Federation (SMF).

She claims that the physical assessment was carried out by Yap, who “punched and kicked” her with more force than necessary.

The Singapore Police Force also confirmed that she has lodged a report regarding the same incident.

In her 18-page-long complaint to the Safe Sport Commission, Tan detailed the troubles she faced with Yap, backed by the pictures of bruises, WhatsApp conversation and email exchange evidence she attached.

Everything started to fall to the wayside for Tan when she came down with COVID-19 in November 2021.

Given the mandatory 14-day isolation period and her ailing health, she told Coach Yap that she wanted to withdraw from the Bangkok World Championships which was happening from 3 December to 12 December.

The news purportedly displeased Yap, who criticised her pulling out and giving a “late notice”, even though she informed him the day she received her diagnosis.

In January, Tan – who clinched the bronze medal in the 2019 SEA Games – was told that her name would be submitted for the Hanoi Games, under the condition that she attended 80% of the training sessions.

Beside being a muay thai athlete, Tan works as a full-time manager.

The training sessions were scheduled at 1:30pm onwards on weekdays and 2:30 onwards on Saturday.

After speaking to her teammates who had similar work commitments, Tan asked for an alternate training time that could ensure that she would fulfil the training requirement and work around the day job hours.

Yap, however, rejected her request.

Afterwards, Tan drafted an official e-mail to Yan on 15 Jan to further elaborate on the situation and find a compromise.

This resulted in her being removed from the WhatsApp group which contained other national athletes and Yap.

On 4 February, she received an e-mail from Yap, telling her that she wouldn’t be participating in any competitions this year, which included the SEA Games.

In the next e-mail, the SMF explained that the organisation felt that she hadn’t reached the proficiency level required based on her last 12 months of training, and that she was rusty/no longer accustomed to the competitive arena.

Of course, Tan appealed against the decision.

A few weeks later on 26 February, she was told that her appeal would be heard the following day.

According to Tan’s account, the panel consisted of Yap, SMF President Clement Ong, Kickboxing Federation of Singapore Vice-President Joey Lye and Wrestling Federation of Singapore Vice-President Operations Vice-Manager Gabriel Huang.

It involved the aforementioned physical assessment, where she would be doing three rounds of three-minute pad work with Yap.

Pad work is a type of training method to gauge the hand speed, reaction time and punching power of any martial practitioner.

Tan wrote that she wasn’t given any rubrics as to how she would be assessed.

Moreover, during that session, Yap, a man that was at least 20kg heavier than her, struck her left leg with many low kicks and shot punches towards her head with “the same frequency and power as a fight”.

Worse, there were no medical personnel on standby. Tan had to fend for herself with only protective gloves and no other equipment, unlike competitions where head and chest guards would have been provided.

After the session ended, she was left with bruises on her leg and face, which she sought medical treatment for two days later, even documenting it as evidence of abuse.

Her appeal fell through too.

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In an interview with The Straits Times, Jeremy Jude, a coach at Jay Muay Thai gym confirmed that it was typical for trainers to test the reaction of athletes with pad work. However, the force behind the hits would be regulated instead of excessive, and coaches are trained to draw reactions, not injure.

The safety of their athletes is an important aspect.

Otherwise, what’s the point of providing professional facilities and coaches to these athletes? Isn’t it precisely to give these athletes a safe environment where they can practice?

When recounting the incident, Tan admitted that it took her some time to come to terms with what had happened. She mentions that she’s glad that there are avenues like the Safe Sport Commission where she can voice her concerns.

Tan loves muay thai and felt that it was necessary to share her story because the abuse had to stop.

Better welfare is needed, she concludes.

The Mishandling of Bryan Tee

Bryan Tee agreed with her.

Upon learning about the report that Tan filed, he decided to speak up too.

While Tee wasn’t physically abused in an assessment, he was of the same mind that Yap didn’t prioritise the athletes’ best interests and welfare at all.

In his complaint, he alleged that in the 2017 SEA Games, he was forced to compete in the 54-57kg weight category despite only weighing 49kg back then.

Prior to the 2017 SEA Games, the then-19-year-old athlete had only competed in the 45-48kg weight category.

Tee claimed that it put him “at significant risk of damage to my body”, since he was made to endure strikes from bigger and stronger opponents without the larger physique to absorb the blows.

However, he was young and desperate to represent Singapore in World Competitions, so he agreed without protesting then.

Tee felt compelled to file his own complaint because he didn’t want anyone to go through the same experience as him.

Other Allegations Against Yap

Honest, Yap is a piece of work, and that isn’t meant as a compliment.

The latest allegations from Tan and Tee came right after four muay thai athletes exposed the fact that they were informed at the last minute that their trip to compete at the International Federation of Muaythai Associations (IFMA) Senior World Championships in Abu Dhabi was cancelled.

The competition was supposed to take place from 26 May to 4 June.

Apparently, the quartet – Cheryl Gwa, Lee De Jun, Chai Kai Quan and Tan Xuan Yun – merely received a WhatsApp message in a group chat with Yap, less than 24 hours before the actual competition, that the trip was cancelled.

It was only in a phone call later that night that Yap explained the reasons for cancellation: namely because “a sponsor had pulled out because the team could not guarantee a medal” and that the team had not “fulfilled attendance requirements for the training”.

Now, doesn’t the last excuse sound eerily familiar?

The team of four are all working adults, but they have been putting in the time and effort to train whenever they can for the competition for the past five months.

They were previously informed that they had to train with Yap from 1pm to 3pm on weekdays, but they countered that they couldn’t meet his training timings because they had their work commitments.

Although a consensus wasn’t reached and the training timing didn’t change, the athletes continued to work with their respective coaches at various gyms, a fact that Yap was fully aware of.

All of them felt that the latter excuse was ridiculous because their training session attendance with Yap has always been a problem, so why were they only being pulled out at the eleventh hour?

For Cheryl Gwa in particular, it was a huge blow to her athletic career as she just won a bronze medal in the Under-48kg class in the recent Hanoi SEA Games.

That would qualify her for the Senior World Championships for sure.

Athlete Lee De Jun, who works in the insurance sector, revealed that the athletes are already paying for their own training, and they invest time and money for the love of the sport.

Considering how they give their very best to represent the country, the most basic courtesy that they should be given is transparency about the situation.

While the quartet considered if they should fund themselves and handle the administrative roles on their own for the competition, they ultimately dropped the idea.

Lee is even considering pulling out of the national team because of this incident.

The SMF President Clement Ong told The Straits Times that he was similarly unaware that a sponsor had pulled out, nor was he was told there were issues with attendance.

SMF will be investigating the matter, nonetheless.

In the interview, President Ong admits that the organisation used to have issues securing funding for their athletes to compete overseas during the pandemic, but with the establishment of a new administration in 2018, the association was being funded by generous donations from patrons.

The funding of athletes for overseas tournaments “is not an entitlement but a preference” that the association has exercised, President Ong clarifies, for the sake of encouraging more athlete participation and commitment in Muay Thai.

He promises to raise the necessary funding for the upcoming World Games and Asian Games for deserving athletes.

Thus far, any attempts to reach Yap by media outlets have been unsuccessful.

It’s crazy how a single coach is capable of messing up the career of so many athletes, and it does make one wonder if there were other muay thai athletes who had suffered under him.

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