“Foul mouthed” Volker Herrmann is no Gordon Ramsey. But as far as the national squad goes, he’ll be remembered for one thing – his tongue-lashing antics on national marathoner Soh Rui Yong minutes before the start of his title race at the SEA Games last year.
Soh Rui Yong in a terse email to Herrmann, calls Herrmann a “liar” and claims his outburst at the SEA Games almost cost Soh his title defence.
But this is not the first time Herrmann is in the public eye for his (mis)conduct. Prior to SEA Games, Herrmann was investigated by a Board of Inquiry setup by athletics body president Ho Mun Cheong.
We received several emails of the exchange between Hermann and the athletes and a report which details Hermanns outbursts in KL: “Singapore athletics will never improve,” the report quotes Hermann and the report states that he used vulgarities to generalise Singaporeans.
But the issues are not simply isolated with Soh and Hermann over the holes Soh had cut in his singlet. Hermann seems to have issues with several SEA Games medallists and coaches.
Margaret Oh, one of our national coaches in an email to the president of the association said the following about the Technical Director (TD):
Hermann has also been accused of showing favouritism.
SEA Games medalist, Dipna Lim Prasad was given a dressing down in front of her team over warming-up routines and speed training.
In an attempt to address the issues, Hermann in an email to the athletics body has said that it was just “plain miscommunication.” He also said that he did not shout at Rui Yong and he “was conversing with Ren Kai, at all material times.”
Volker Hermann has also provided a written statement that he has not favoured or shown any kind of bias between the athletes.
Our athletics team has done us proud and they do deserve to be treated with respect and dignity and they are nobody’s punching bag.
It seems apparent that our national athletes are denigrated, demeaned and demoralised by this one man. If we can take a scene out of the hit series Survivour, say, “The Tribe has spoken.”