The Vietnam General Department of Sports and Physical Training has just had a meeting with Vietnam sports delegation about the up coming Asian Beach Games held in Thailand.
The Vietnam General Department of Sports and Physical Training has just had a meeting with Vietnam sports delegation about the upcoming Asian Beach Games held in Thailand.
The Vietnam sports delegation will join the fourth Asian Beach Game with 196 members in which there are 136 athletes of 19 teams. Reportedly, 13 out of 19 sports events Vietnam will compete have been given good investment, including long-distance swimming, athletics, kurash, petanque, sepak takraw, football, volleyball, woodball, wrestling, bodybuilder, muay, jujitsu, and women’s handball. The other six sports have been invested in the form of socialization, such as men’s handball, parasailing, foot volleyball, waterski, triathlon and extreme sports.
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Among those sports, Vietnam’s athletes are evaluated to be competitive in some sports, especially in martial arts like muay Thai, jujitsu, kurash and bodybuilder. For example, in kurash, “golden girl” of Vietnam’s martial arts Van Ngoc Tu used to win two golden medals at the Asian Indoor Games in 2009 and 2013. Nguyen Phu Hien is the first athlete of Vietnam to grab the championship in muay Thai world championship 2014.
In some collective sports like beach football, beach volleyball, women’s handball, woodball and sepak takraw, Vietnam gained bronze medals at the previous Asian Beach Games. However, Vietnam sports are not really strong enough to compete with strong teams in Asia like China, Korea, Thailand, Japan, etc. Therefore, the main target of Vietnam sports teams when competing at these sports events is to exchange and learn experience in order to prepare for the fifth Asian Beach Games hosted by Vietnam in 2016.
However, at the ASEAN Beach Football Championships held in Malaysia last October, the beach football team of Vietnam overcame many strong teams to play in the final match and got the silver medal after losing to Malaysia’s team. This is a big driving force for the Vietnam’s beach football team to reach the continental level at this Asian sports event.
Beach athletics (long-distance running and long jump) becomes part of this year’s Asian Beach Games for the first time. In order to compete at this new sport, Vietnam sports have had good preparation in athletes with the participation of the athletes who gained high achievements at the regional tournaments and young ones who performed well at the national tournaments.
It can be said that with the good preparation, Vietnam sports delegation promises to play well and gain good achievements at the regional sports event this year.
H.N
