Vietnamese Sports from SEA Games 32 (*): Quality has not kept up with quantity

It is noteworthy that although the team ranked first in football, there are still many concerns about the appearance of the U22 men's team; in addition, the group of basic Olympic sports, although mostly present in the top 3 rankings of SEA Games 32, also has very few parameters approaching the continental or world achievements.

Vietnamese football is ranked No. 1 in the congress along with wrestling, weightlifting, judo, karate, gymnastics; No. 2 is athletics, swimming; while No. 3 is table tennis, taekwondo, volleyball... which is an affirmation that Vietnamese sports are on the right track because they focus on developing the basic Olympic sports group, skipping the "shortcut" stage that was once successful with indigenous sports (stick fighting, pencak silat, kurash...) that are not strong enough to reach the continental or Olympic arena.

Winning 136 gold medals is considered to have exceeded the target when the Vietnamese sports delegation (VSD) had initially set a target of only 85-120 gold medals before departure. Some people think that exceeding the target so much might have been an error in professional forecasting. According to experts, the outstanding achievement at this congress is due to the fact that the time between the 31st and 32nd SEA Games was only 12 months, and the strength of VSD was still maintained as when leading the congress at home.

Tran Minh Tri won gold medal and broke the weightlifting record in the men's 67 kg category (Photo: NGOC LINH)

Besides, Vietnam is focusing on preparing to compete at the 2023 Hangzhou Asian Games (China) as well as qualifying for the 2024 Paris Olympics (France), so good results at the 32nd SEA Games are completely understandable.

There is also a view that the reason why Vietnam has the advantage is because Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia or Singapore did not send their strongest teams to the 32nd SEA Games, but this perspective is quite one-sided. Just look at the fierce competition between the teams in athletics or swimming, even the host Cambodia won the first gold medal in athletics (men's 800m) to see the fierce nature of the game.

It is worth mentioning that winning a high number of gold medals does not reflect the real progress of Vietnam's sports. Over 700 athletes competed in 30 sports with thousands of matches but only 16 records were broken, including 10 records in the "gold mine" of diving, clearly not enough to satisfy experts.

In addition to the four times Nguyen Quoc Toan (89 kg) and Tran Minh Tri (67 kg) broke the old records in weightlifting, Pham Thanh Bao's two swimming records in the 100 m breaststroke and 200 m breaststroke, although notable, were still far behind the group with Asian Games medals.

Nguyen Huy Hoang may be the rare hope for Vietnam to win a medal at the Asian Games, but Hoang's gold medal in the 1,500m distance with a time of 15 minutes 11 seconds 24 at the 32nd SEA Games cannot be compared to the 15 minutes 01 seconds 63 that helped him win a silver medal at the 2018 Asian Games. At the Hangzhou Asian Games, members of the Vietnam delegation must both worry about their results and calculate the standard to participate in the 2024 Olympics, this dual task is not easy.

If there are many compliments, the duo Dinh Anh Hoang - Tran Mai Ngoc with the historic gold medal in mixed doubles in table tennis after 26 years or the gymnastics team that broke the Philippines' dominance after many consecutive games deserve to be recognized for their great efforts and hard work.

(To be continued)

(*) See Lao Dong Newspaper from issue dated May 19

Source: https://nld.com.vn/the-thao/the-thao-viet-nam-nhin-tu-sea-games-32-chat-chua-theo-kip-luong-20230521212909539.htm