PHNOM PENH – Timothy Loh does not know how to stop. When he operates his pop-up food businesses, his days begin at 5.30am and he easily spends 10 hours on his feet, preparing ingredients and cooking.
When it comes to chasing his sporting dreams, he is similarly relentless. He represented Singapore at the 2013 and 2015 SEA Games, claiming bronze in judo.
He switched to sambo in 2019, got a bronze and moved on to Greco-Roman wrestling at the 2022 Hanoi Games where he clinched – you guessed it – a bronze.
Loh, 31, finally reached the pinnacle on Tuesday, winning the men’s 125kg freestyle for Singapore’s first wrestling gold.
He beat Cambodian Dorn Sao and Laos’ Lerdxai Khamtama in the round-robin format.
It was enough to see him finish top of the three-competitor category and claim the top prize. Singapore’s wrestlers also won three silver and five bronze medals in other disciplines.
The immediate thought was like “wow, all my birthdays are happening on this one day”, he said.
“It just made sense to me. Imagine all those SEA Games, all those years of training and real sacrifice. It’s an amazing feeling. Words cannot describe it. Maybe you should try competing at the SEA Games,” chuckled the 107kg Loh.
He is a part-time judo and Brazilian jiu-jitsu (BJJ) coach and bar/restaurant consultant and said both worlds complement each other. Each requires hyper-focus, grit and hard work.
“Working in the kitchen is damn tough man,” he said.
Being adaptable – a trait any chef will tell you is fundamental – was also key. A month before the Games, Loh’s coach Gabriel Huang asked him if he was keen to compete in both Greco-Roman and freestyle events in Cambodia as, unlike in Vietnam, participants could feature in both disciplines.
Unlike freestyle wrestling, the former forbids holds below the waist and emphasises on throws as athletes cannot trip, sweep or hook an opponent’s leg.
Huang and Wrestling Federation of Singapore high performance manager Gerard Lim both felt that with Loh’s background in judo and sambo – a martial art similar to ju-jitsu – he would be in his element.
Loh, who claimed a bronze in the Greco-Roman 130kg event on Sunday, was slightly nervous about freestyle, as he trains mainly in the former style but “years of doing different grappling sports, everything is very transferable”.
He added: “I just follow the opportunities (to win medals). You miss all the shots you don’t take. This is one of them.”
The medal will go on his shelf at home where he keeps all his silverware. “It’s nice I’ve got a little change of colour, to freshen it up. You know us Chinese, got to get some gold in the room,” he laughed.
He paid tribute to mental performance coach Hansen Bay for his help with the entire wrestling squad, and said a three-month training stint in Budapest before arriving here was also critical.
He is already looking forward to three other major competitions, the World Beach Games in Bali in August, Hangzhou Asian Games in late September and World Combat Games in Riyadh in October.
He said: “We have a pretty stacked calendar so this gold is a really nice start for us.”
There is no question too, that he will be in Bangkok to defend his SEA Games title in 2025.
“Unless someone can beat me, I won’t stop.”
Correction note: An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of mental performance coach Hansen Bay. This has been corrected.
