Bach is one of two Vietnamese students winning gold medals at the 2024 IOI. The other is Pham Cong Minh, a 12th grader at the same school. All the members of the Vietnamese competition team attending this year IOI are students at the same school and all of them won medals.

Bach’s gold medal helped Vietnam list itself among the top 4 countries with highest achievements at IOI, after the US, Japan and Poland. He said he was very happy when gaining the achievement.

Bach’s mother, Le Thi Thu Huyen, said she was excited about the result gained by her son, but it was not a surprise at all. Over the last 11 years at school, Bach always has stayed strongly determined and resilient.

On the first day at the competition, Bach was ranked 46th among 353 competitors. In order to win a gold, he needed to list among top 30.

“I knew that my son was then under pressure, and I sent messages to him every day. I told him to take every minute to solve the questions. Nothing is impossible and I believed he can do it,” Huyen recalled.

Bach then made a breakthrough on the second day when coming back to the top 30 and stayed at the 29th position until the competition finished.

Huyen said that when she realized that the competition would end after 18 minutes, she could not help sending her son a message, though she knew that he could not read it before he left the exam room. 

“I still texted to him ‘Son, keep it up! I believe you will win’,” Huyen recalled, adding that she believed in ‘telepathy’ between mother and son, and this would bring a miracle.

At first, Bach was a maths major student. He showed his aptitude for maths when he was very small.

When he was in the fourth grade, he won second prize at the national ViOlympic Maths and English. When he was in the fifth grade, he won a silver at the IMSO (International Mathematics and Science Olympiad for Primary School) which was organized in China.

When he was a sixth grader, he won a gold at APMOPS (Asia Pacific Mathematical Olympiad for Primary School) in Singapore in 2019. In the same year, he won another gold at the 16th international competition in maths and sciences.

However, Bach switched to focus on informatics, which was a surprise to his parents.

“When he was in seventh grade, Covid-19 broke out. As he had to stay at home, he felt a little bit sad. I suggested that he try informatics. Since then, he has studied informatics,” Huyen said.

Bach then sought materials and books about informatics. “After a short time, Bach told me that he likes informatics and he wants to study because he can feel the creativity of the subject,” Huyen recalled.

Seeing the son’s passion for maths, Huyen told him that she would always stand by his side and support him. As an eighth grader, Bach joined the team of excellent students majoring in informatics of the Hanoi-Amsterdam High School for the Gifted just five months after studying informatics and an elementary training course.

He then won second prize at the city’s competition for excellent students in informatics the same year, and first prize at the national informatics competition for youth.

When he was in the 11th grade, he won first prize at the national competition for excellent students in informatics, and won a silver at the 2024 APIO (Asia-Pacific Informatics Olympiad).

Bach said his ‘knowhow’ to become good at informatics is studying hard and taking initiative in studying. Sometimes he spends 14 hours a day on coding. He has such a great passion for informatics that he always forgets about the time. He was once busy solving questions and did not realize that three hours had elapsed.

In addition to learning, Bach also does housework and plays sports.

Thanh Hung