U.S. Olympic artistic swimming coach suspended for more than a decade over abuse allegations

Allegations of athlete abuse led to the suspension of Hiea Yoon KangHead coach of the La Mirada Aquabelles and USA Artistic Swimming (USAAS) staff member for the 2024 Olympics.

Former U.S. national team members, La Mirada club swimmers and their parents allege in interviews and complaints to the U.S. Center for SafeSport that Kang regularly physically, verbally and emotionally abused athletes as young as nine for more than a decade The Orange County Register.

Complaints include Kang repeatedly bullying, laughing or ignoring swimmers who sobbed or screamed in pain, and at least one instance in which she dislocated an athlete’s toe during stretching exercises. The OC Register Reports.

Fourteen current and former members of the Aquabelles, including former national team members, have reportedly denounced Kang’s pattern of abuse in interviews. In addition, there are formal complaints to SafeSport and further investigation documents are available. The OC Register.

Since 2022, up to 18 swimmers have filed abuse complaints with SafeSport.

Kang, 41, has built the Aquabelles into a prestigious team that is a pipeline to the U.S. national team. He started the program in Long Beach in 2006 before moving to La Mirada a year later.

After earning USAAS Age Group Developmental Coach of the Year honors in 2008, Kang was named head coach of the U.S. Junior National Team in 2011 and has served on the national staff since then.

Last January, she was named assistant coach of the U.S. national team in preparation for the 2024 Olympic Games.

“It’s terrible,” said an anonymous former national team member The OC Register“I don’t know how she can continue to train at the highest level. It’s been like this for so long. It’s no secret.”

Kang landed the Paris national team role 16 months after serving as CEO of USA Artistic Swimming Adam Andrasco Kang reportedly received complaints of “mental and emotional misconduct and abuse.” Along with allegations that Kang forced athletes to compete and train with injuries, physically shamed young athletes and committed child labor, punishing athletes as young as 11 by forcing them to teach swimming two hours a day and targeting children in the ages 5 to 7 while they would otherwise not be supervised by a lifeguard, USAAS documents show.

A parent claimed his 11-year-old daughter witnessed a young child nearly drowning while being taught by a member of the Aquabelles.

Kang was initially suspended as coach of the US national team in May. The OC Register reported after Andrasko was informed of “much more concerning” allegations than 16 months earlier.

“Still, these are just allegations,” Andrasko said. “This is not an admission of guilt by Coach Kang. But ultimately my responsibility is the (safety) of the athlete.”

Kang was named to the U.S. national team for the 2024 World Cup even though Andrasko and other USAAS officials knew that SafeSport had been investigating Kang for over a year.

Andrasko denied Kang’s appointment as a promotion and described it as a contract extension.

As many as 18 swimmers and parents brought more than 80 specific allegations against Kang over 13 years, including physical, verbal and emotional abuse, bullying, body shaming, forcing athletes to compete or train while injured or undergoing medical procedures suffered problems requiring surgery, and children suffered labor and risk abuse, according to SafeSport documents obtained by The OC Register.

“Hiea Yoon Kang’s coaching has caused physical and mental suffering for me and many others,” a swimmer who recently competed for the Aquabelles wrote in a complaint.

The OC RegisterThe report details a specific instance in which the team completed a daunting set on Kang’s 29th birthday in 2011, in which Kang endangered the athletes’ safety.

“She got us in the water and announced that we would celebrate by completing 29 50s on the track, with a time of 29 seconds for the 50 yards,” said Miranda Marqueza former Aquabelles member who had been hospitalized with a kidney stone just days earlier.

“One way would be butterfly and the way back would be an underwater lap. No breathing.

“We had to start the 29 (sprints) over again when we caught our breath. Trainer Kang told us that fainting was not an excuse for not finishing the exercises and that we had to stop before she allowed medical attention. She even commented that she didn’t want us to pass out and screw it up for everyone else by getting our teammates to save us and have us all start from the top.”

After the 19.50s, Marquez had to rush to the bathroom, where Kang found her “collapsed and sobbing on the bathroom floor.”

After asking her to call her parents and take her to the emergency room, Kang told Marquez, “You know everyone has to start over now because of you, right?”

Marquez’s parents finally arrived after Kang dismissed the severity of her medical event.

“She said, ‘This is not what I wanted for my birthday,'” Marquez said. “‘How dare you do this on my birthday?'”

Elisa Marquez, Miranda’s mother, said: “Miranda was throwing up in pain and (Kang) still didn’t believe her. It was just terrible. No empathy, nothing, nothing. It was like it was an inconvenience that Miranda was in pain and vomiting.”

Miranda Marquez, former head coach of the Canadian national team, said it’s not uncommon for synchro coaches to be abusive Gabor Szauder was removed from his role last year due to abuse – but “Kang is different.”

“Most synchronous coaches are psychologically abusive,” she said. “That’s kind of their whole thing.

“She is crueler (than other coaches) and has been cruel from the start,” Marquez detailed when she moved from the Riverside Aquattes team to the Aquabelles.

“I didn’t want to know anything about us. And the few questions she asked were about our goals, and I remember the conversation we had when me and my teammates first came from Riverside, and basically we told her that we were going to be on the national team wanted to. We wanted to be the national team. We wanted to reach the highest levels and eventually go to the Olympics, and she replied something like, “Okay, that means I’m going to be really hard on you.” And neither of us were strangers to working hard. We were elite athletes who pushed ourselves to the point of illness, beyond what we were supposed to do.

“I was already competing when I was not medically cleared by nine different neurologists because I suffered a concussion in the pool and still competed. I bring this up because it was not a lack of drive and determination and we were no strangers to any of this.

“But the way Kang was was so incredible.”

The detailed report from The OC Register describes numerous instances of Kang’s abuse and the consequences, including:

• Swimmers and parents live in fear of her temperament
• Sometimes Kang would simply leave practice when she was angry, and these swimmers wouldn’t know whether to get out of the water or wait for her to return because they didn’t know what to do for fear of the consequences
• Regular physical abuse, including up to 40 hours of training per week, training while recovering from surgeries and injuries, hypoxic training that put them at risk of losing consciousness, and Kang dislocating her toes and knees during exercises of the swimmer overstretched
• Regular insults towards athletes, including being called “stupid”, “dumb” or “loser”
• Regular body shaming, derogatory comments about weight, appearance, body type and diet
• One parent said, “My daughter was even afraid to eat her dinner in the car on the way home a few times because she thought Kang would be driving next to us.”
• No swimmer was exempt, but Kang would target certain swimmers for regular harassment and demeaning comments
• Swimmers leave the sport with physical and emotional scars left beneath them during their training

As of May 21st, Kang no longer appears in the SafeSport database.

You can read the full report here The OC Register Here.