The man who schooled us in the gym

ALI KASIM

Pasted on the wall of the boxing gym at Farrer Park was a slogan that read: “The more you sweat, the less you bleed”.

I hadn’t even stepped into the ring yet. After three laps around the old Farrer Park field and 15 minutes of skipping exercises, I was already drenched in perspiration.

For the first time, I realised just how heavy a boxing glove actually was. “How am I even gonna swing this at someone’s face?” I said to one of my teammates as he tied the laces of a black glove, which weighed half a kilogram, to my wrist.

“That’s the point,” answered an older voice from behind me. “If you want to box, you have to build strength and endurance.”

My boxing coach, Syed Abdul Kadir, had heard it all before from clueless 16-year-olds like me. We wanted to throw punches and inflict pain. But we had no clue about the work we had to put in to earn that privilege.

“You wanna float like a butterfly, learn how to skip rope first,” Kadir, a Commonwealth Games bronze-medallist, would tell us.

Since 1934, St Andrew’s Secondary School has been the only school in Singapore to offer teenage boys a chance to take up boxing as an extracurricular activity. It was started by Canon Adams, the principal of the school at the time. He hoped that when faced with hardship, Saints would “learn to cope, be able to take life’s hard knocks, and learn to counter-attack”.

At the school, it has also been a long-standing tradition – since the 1970s – to hold bouts involving students as part of its National Day celebrations.

The bouts, during my school days in the 90s, were held in an ad hoc boxing ring set up in the middle of the school’s quadrangle, and officiated by professional referees.

We would train once a week at the Singapore Amateur Boxing Association headquarters in Farrer Park. Closer to Aug 9, we would train an extra day on the school grounds as well.

Student boxers then were made up mostly of the school’s rugby players – rugby being the institution’s most revered sport – but, in my one and only year with the school boxing team, I recall there was also a librarian and a chess club member.

For 16-year-olds, boxing was the epitome of cool, inspired no less by fictional icons such as Rocky and, of course, boxing legends Muhammad Ali and Mike Tyson.

For me, personally, it was perhaps also innate. After all, I was told by my late father, a devout boxing fan, that I was named after his favourite boxer.

Locally, boxing has suffered a decline since Kadir, a St Andrew’s old boy who picked up the sport in school, represented Singapore in the 60s and 70s.

“During those days, people would run from work and school to watch the fights. People were more keen on rough and tough games. But lifestyles change,” he once said.

The boxing tradition in St Andrew’s, though, was something he was proud of continuing. He coached the Saints from 1990 to 2016.

“It is one sport that really helps the boys learn self-respect and discipline.”

Kadir was just nine years old when he started out. By 20, in 1968, he had won his first national championship. He made his South-east Asian Peninsular Games debut in 1969, winning a bronze medal before going on to win gold in 1971 and two silvers in 1973 and 1975.

His greatest achievement was a bronze at the 1974 Commonwealth Games, but he considers the 1972 Olympics one of his proudest moments, when he fought a Cuban.

The stocky Kadir was dominating his opponent until a cut above his brow ended his hopes. Officials deemed the cut serious enough to stop the fight, and they awarded the bout to the Cuban.

Kadir retired in 1976 at age 28, but was national coach and secretary of the Singapore Amateur Boxing Association until 2003.

In 1999, he was named among ‘Singapore’s 50 Greatest Athletes of the Century’. On Feb 6, in a ceremony attended by President Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Singapore’s only Olympic boxer was inducted into the Singapore Sport Hall of Fame.

In tribute to the athletes honoured, Mr Tharman wrote on his Instagram: “Syed Kadir was shorter than most boxers in the light-flyweight category, but was soon renowned for his superfast left hook.”

These days, Kadir, who is of Arab descent, moves around in a wheelchair. Aside from suffering a mild stroke a few years ago, the 75-year-old also suffers from dementia.

Despite his condition, he still recalls his time at St Andrew’s, both as a student and a coach.

“As a student, I remember watching the seniors compete against one another. Watching them gave me motivation to train and compete, and that is how my boxing career began,” he told tabla!.

When asked about his best memories coaching students, he said: “Apart from the students competing, we had national boxers and boxers from overseas fighting in exhibition matches to inspire the students, and many of them showed keen interest in the sport.

“My son (Syed Fahmy), who was also from Saint Andrew’s, picked up the sport and began his boxing journey from there.”

Like his father, Syed Fahmy, 49, won the Singapore National Championships back in 1995 at the age of 19. He went on to represent Singapore in numerous international competitions until 2000.

Currently, he and other former students of his father are running Kadir’s Boxing School in Guillemard Road.

“As a coach, my dad used to emphasise that one must make huge sacrifices to become a boxer – train regularly, no late nights, be humble and have a positive mindset,” he said.

Boxing at St Andrew’s, meanwhile, still continues.

No longer do students battle inside a makeshift ring in the middle of the quadrangle; these days, National Day bouts are held indoors – still under the supervision of professional coaches and referees.

Back in 1996, despite my namesake-inspired calling, I was ultimately left out of the National Day fight card. Training, you see, had been too much to keep up with. Tedious drills and regular rope-skipping became too much for restless, ill-disciplined me. And because I didn’t clock enough training sessions, I couldn’t box on the big day.

I doubt Kadir remembers me as a student, and it saddened me to hear of his deteriorating health. But I certainly won’t forget him as a coach, or that aptly phrased slogan on his gym wall.