Swimmer Nguyen Thi Anh Vien wins eight individual gold medals for Vietnam at the 29th SEA Games in Malaysia.

After 10 years, Vietnamese swimming has developed strongly with significant achievements and is confidently looking towards reigning in the Southeast Asian region and reaching farther in the continental playground.

VASA President, Nguyen Duc Hanh, said that, over the past 55 years of construction and development, aquatic sports have become one of the key subjects of Vietnamese sport in the process of international integration. In terms of movements and community activities, the seventh-tenure VASA achieved numerous successes, contributing to changing social awareness of drowning among children and organizing many swimming classes for thousands of children. 

Up to date, over 30 provinces and cities across Vietnam have been developing aquatic sporting events, with a stable number of nearly 2,000 athletes at all levels. In international activities, Vietnam’s aquatic athletes won two bronze medals at the 2014 Asian Games in Incheon, Republic of Korea, and had the first athlete to qualify for the Olympic Games by meeting the A standard – Nguyen Thi Anh Vien at the 2016 Rio Olympics in Brazil.

In order to lead the swimming competition at the 2021 SEA Games, Vietnam needs to win between 15 and 20 gold medals. Looking back to 2017, Vietnam’s swimming team attended the 29th SEA Games in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, with a strong lineup, featuring pillars Anh Vien, Quy Phuoc, and Duy Khoi, in addition to young debutants, such as Vu Thi Phuong Anh, Tran Ngoc Thi, Nguyen Huu Kim Son, Nguyen Diep Phuong Tram and Nguyen Huy Hoang. 

However, the Vietnamese swimmers only secured ten gold medals, with Anh Vien accounting for eight of them, while 15-year-old Kim Son set a record as the youngest SEA Games champion, as he broke the 14-year record in the men’s individual 400m medley event.

The 2021 SEA Games will be held in Vietnam, promising to be a good opportunity for Vietnamese swimming to realizing the aforementioned goal. Up to now, a lineup of swimmers for the second SEA Games edition on the home field has already been prepared, and the task of the VASA is to coordinate with the other agencies and localities concerned, as well as social organizations, to provide the best possible training environment and nutritional conditions for the athletes. 

For nearly a decade, Vietnamese sport has taken effective steps to become one of the two leaders, in terms of swimming, in Southeast Asia, besides Singapore. With such experience, the country’s current swimmer generation will be provided with the best preparations in service of the goal of conquering the region’s swimming peak.

Source: NDO