How the Syrian Shekho became the national coach of the Dutch boxers

A good boxer, says Waleed Shekho, is a technical boxer. With fast footwork, precisely placed punches. Every step must be carefully considered, like a dance step, moving the body smoothly, whether boxers are tall or short. In the ring, technique must win over speed and power, says the national coach of the Dutch men’s boxing team, who was appointed in December. But it starts with the mindset. A winning mentality.

Shekho should know. He boxed at the highest level in his native Syria. He promised himself to become the best in the world. If that didn’t work as a boxer – in Syria he always finished second – then as a coach. Now he wants to accompany the Dutch boxers to the Olympic Games and win gold there.

His star rose in the Netherlands when, at his own expense, he started training young boxers for international tournaments. At the European Championship in Italy in 2018, Cas van Peer, then seventeen, won bronze. It was the first medal in eighteen years for a Dutch youth boxer. Shekho played himself in the spotlight, also because initially no one saw anything in Van Peer, now one of the best boxers in the Netherlands. “Cas was a thin and a tall boy. Everyone laughed at him,” says Shekho, who has been training Van Peer since he was fifteen. “I mainly saw a tall boy with a lot of strength.”

Shekho trains with the Dutch elite men in The Colosseum Gym, a large sports hall in an inconspicuous business park on the northern edge of Utrecht. He stands in front of one of the three boxing rings, in which two boys with head protectors fight each other. Next to it, on the bright red floor, five others slam into bags. Shekho is short in stature and has a high, soft voice. But everyone listens. A man of authority, technical director of the Dutch boxing association René Braad calls him. “With his dedication and great knowledge, he commands respect.”

That’s because, says boxer Tony Jas, Shekho has a keen eye on where someone can improve, and how. “Waleed is disciplined, but fair. He can take strong criticism, but I always understand why. Jas towers over Shekho, but he speaks softly and his words express affection. “Waleed analyzes all my opponents and adjusts the training accordingly. He knows my whole family, I trust him completely.”

Cas van Peer is also full of praise for the national coach. “Waleed is not a nice coach. He is quite hard and can get angry very well. But because of him I have a goal, a focus: the Olympics.”

heavy heart

Waleed Shekho was born in Syria, in the northeastern city of Hasaka, in Kurdish territory, as the seventh of eight children. His father worked in construction, his mother, an illiterate, was a seamstress. “She was not allowed to go to school, so we had to study,” says Shekho (41) at his home on the couch in Dordrecht. “All her children have master’s degrees.”

That Shekho wanted to box was not appreciated. When his seven-year-older brother had to look after him, but also wanted to box, he took Shekho with him. Shekho boxed his first match at the age of 12. “But I got more blows from my father than in the ring,” he chuckles. “When I won a competition and my name was in the paper, my father was proud, although he never said that. But when I went to the boxing gym a day later, he got mad.”

It saddens him that his father never saw his successes. He died unexpectedly in 2006, while he was visiting Shekho, who at the time lived in the Syrian capital Damascus. “He went to the hospital with stomach problems, but due to a mistake by the doctors, he didn’t get out alive,” Shekho said. With a heavy heart—and his father’s body—he traveled back to his hometown. “My aunt said we sent him alive and you brought him back dead.” Shekho started smoking. He fell into a depression and stopped boxing.

Five years after the death of his father, Shekho decided to leave for the Netherlands. This destination was obvious, because in the previous years he worked for the NIASD, the Netherlands Institute for Academic Studies in Damascus.

Just before the war in Syria broke out in full force, in 2011, Shekho landed at Schiphol. Before leaving, he had been drafted into the army, but had bought his military service privately. Once in the Netherlands, it turned out that he could no longer return to Syria. He has never seen his family since.

As painful as it was, Shekho decided not to let that put him off. “The first time I read the news every day, until I couldn’t sleep anymore between 2012 and 2013. Then I decided: I’m never going to read news again, I can’t do anything there anyway.” He removed all of his Middle Eastern relationships from social media, only keeping in touch with his family.

Germ in Rijswijk

For Shekho, boxing is freedom, he says. The body, the concentration and the opponent, nothing else. “It’s the only freedom I feel. You couldn’t talk in Syria. Not about politics, about nothing. Others decide who to marry, what to do. Everything is determined, whether you are a man or a woman. When I’m in the ring, I always feel free.”

The seeds of Shekho’s Dutch success were sown in the Rijswijk boxing school Nicolaas. There he was given the space to train talented boxers, including Tony Jas. Boxing school owner Vincent Stikkolorum introduced Shekho to the Dutch boxing association in 2014. At that time, the association did not have a men’s team that trained through the NOC-NSF sports umbrella. So Shekho went to international tournaments at his own expense.

That was difficult, especially the first years that Shekho was in the Netherlands. He lived on savings, lived in an anti-squat together with his Dutch girlfriend to save on rent costs and earned some money as a personal trainer. Through voluntary work he built up a network, also in the sports world.

It was not easy for him to prove himself as a foreigner in the small world of Dutch boxing. Shekho was initially ignored, some people even refused to shake hands with him. It was Abdul Fkiri, coach and partner of top boxer Nouchka Fontijn, who gave Shekho the golden tip. Take one fighter to the top and you’ll make your name, he said. Shekho replied that he was going to make ten boxers great. “Abdul laughed and answered – rightly – that that might be possible in Syria, but would be very difficult in the Netherlands. Parents interfere in everything here and the union pays nothing.”

Dutch boxers are also much less disciplined than their colleagues in Syria, or large boxing countries such as Cuba, Kazakhstan and Russia, says Shekho. “There they sometimes practice the same punch for days in front of the mirror. Boxers here don’t have that patience.”

A close team

The Dutch men train in one of the three boxing rings in The Colosseum Gym, while the women box in the other two. They receive instructions from national coach Sayit Yanik, who was appointed at the same time as Shekho in December. “It may seem as if we are new,” says Yanik, who is of Turkish descent and who also owns a poultry company in addition to his work as a national coach. “But we’ve both been going for a while. We are new in this role, now everyone really sees our drive to perform.”

The two both have their own boxers, but form a close team. They consult, agree who goes to which tournament and support each other where possible. Shekho is happy that he only has to deal with the men, he says. “I can only train people who are like me.” Also according to Yanik, training women is really different from training men. “They have a different load capacity,” he says. “But the hormones are also a bit complicated. You shouldn’t want to understand that. We as men cannot understand that.”

Corona made travel difficult, but Shekho is hopeful that the results he achieved in 2021 will improve further. Shekho’s ‘own’ boxer Mustafa Akraa, who also comes from Syria, won silver at the European Under-22 Championship in Italy last year. Akraa is now also part of the Dutch team.

For Shekho, the most important thing is that he can focus on his goal: the Olympics. To really win, those of Paris in 2024 are still too early, too much has to happen in Dutch boxing for that. Shekho is thinking about the Los Angeles Games in 2028. And after that? Then he stops. With boxing and with smoking.