Photo by Jeffrey F Lin on Unsplash
A two year-old video of the head coach of Turkish youth team Kayseri Meysuspor, Halit Kurt, slapping his players in the locker room, has come back to haunt him.
With the team down 1-3 against their rivals, Halit saw it fit to slap every one of his players in what he terms as a normal practice in football, and that the approach was extra motivation to win matches.
In the video Halit can be heard shouting “I will kill you! What a disgrace!”
After the video was widely shared on social media, Halit claimed that the “method” of bringing up champions had been widely used not only in Turkey but all over the world.
Halit’s abusive method is not new in sports. Back in the 1990s the Malaysian foreign gymnastic coach was also embroiled in a similar situation.
While physically abusing athletes is frowned upon, it is a worrying trend as coaches do not spare the cane in search of excellence.
In Australia earlier this year, another video of a junior soccer coach allegedly slapping a 10-year-old player in the face created similar outrage.
The video allegedly showed the coach of the Nerang Eagles, Shaun McPherson, 42, slapping Terrell Stubbs, 10, in the face after a home game in the town of Nerang in Queensland.
In April this year, the Japan Fencing Association banned their coach Alexander Gorbachuk from overseas competitions for six months for slapping players under his supervision at the World Cup event in March.
In 2013 it was revealed that Japan’s Olympic women judo wrestlers were beaten with bamboo swords and slapped by their coaches. The news came just weeks after a schoolboy suicide sparked debate over corporal punishment.
The group, which included athletes who took part in the London Olympics, revealed that head coach Ryuji Sonoda routinely abused them, slapping them in the face and hitting them with thick wooden swords, like those used in the Japanese martial art of kendo.
Last year, Shim Suk-hee, a star short-track skater who has won four Olympic medals – including a relay gold at the Pyeongchang Games – accused her coach of punching and kicking her dozens of times, leaving her needing medical treatment for a month.
Cho Jae-beom later admitted to police that he beat Shim and other national team skaters at their training camp to “improve their performance”.
Almost a decade ago, the Indiana football team guard
Neil Reed accused coach Bob Knight of choking him during a practice in 1997.
After video of the incident was made public, Indiana put Knight on a strict
zero-tolerance policy.
In September of 2000, Knight, who had been with Indiana since 1971 and won
three national championships as coach, was fired after more accusations from
players saying Knight physically grabbed them.
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