VietNamNet Bridge – Lam Quang Thanh, head of the Vietnamese sports delegation to the Southeast Asian Games 2011, said that Vietnam is ready for a successful games.
Thanh has paid a visit to the national U23 football squad in Indonesia. The football, canoeing, badminton teams are the first Vietnamese athletes who have been to Indonesia already.

Today, November 9, Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism Hoang Tuan Anh and 176 members of the Vietnamese sports delegation, will go to Indonesia’s Palembang on a hired flight of Vietnam Airlines.

The chess team will go to Indonesia on a commercial flight and they will have to transit at Jakarta before going to Palembang. Another group of 101 athletes will fly from Hanoi to HCM City and to Jakarta on the evening of November 9. The remaining members will go to Indonesia on November 10 and 11.

“Vietnamese athletes have been invested and taken care the best. I confirm that the delegation is ready for the 26th SEA Games,” Thanh stated.

The official expected that Vietnam would have the first gold medal on November 11, from canoeing and more medals on November 12--from taekwondo, karate, swimming, track and field and shooting.

Thanh worried about accommodations and travel in Jakarta and particularly Palembang. He said that there are not enough air tickets for boxers and beach volleyball players from Jakarta to Palembang.

However, he confirmed that everything will be fine because the games organizing board and Garuda airlines have committed to supply sufficient air tickets from Jakarta to Palembang for the Vietnamese delegations.

“In Palembang, 14 Vietnamese teams will stay in the athlete’s village and 7 others will have to stay at hotels. The athlete’s village is very good. We have booked hotels already. Once our athletes go there, they only need to check in and prepare for competition,” Thanh added.

With nearly 900 members, this is the biggest delegation of Vietnam to a SEA Games so far. Vietnam aims to win from 70 to 90 gold medals and rank in the top three delegations.

The delegation includes 42 teams. The track-and-field team is the largest group with 55 members. The team aims to win 8-10 gold medals and get tickets to Olympic 2012 for runners Truong Thanh Hang and Vu Thi Huong. Other sports like judo, shooting, karate, pencak silat, weightlifting, wrestling, wushu and taekwondo are also the hopes of Vietnam.

The 26th SEA Games will open on November 11. The Games will features hundreds of events in 44 disciplines, which two of them are demonstration sports.

Track-and-field athletes ready for SEA Games competitions

Forty-one athletes flew to Indonesia on November 9 aiming for more than 20 medals in total, including 7 to 9 golds.

Vietnam has high hopes for outstanding sprinters Truong Thanh Hang and Vu Thi Huong who have won gold medals at regional and international competitions.  

Hang – one of Vietnam’s hopefuls for a gold medal in the women’s 800m race – said she is in good form for the competition following a recent month-long training course in Kunming, China.

“I am self-confident now and waiting for competitions against opponents,” Hang told VOV prior to the departure.

Experts also expect young athletes such as Duong Viet Anh, Nguyen Thi Ly, Nguyen Thi Thanh Phuc and Duong Van Thai will perform well at this biggest regional sporting event.

“Vietnam has not won any medal in the women’s 100m hurdle at regional events for a long time,” said athlete Cao Thanh Hang. “We have trained well in China, hoping to be among the top winners this time.”

As the Vietnamese track-and-field has been acknowledged for good results in Southeast Asia and even Asia, it will be the main force of Vietnamese sports at SEA Games 26 in Indonesia.

“We have followed with keen interest international competitions including the Asian Athletics Championships, Thailand Open and Singapore Open, and found that our opponents did not perform well,” said Nguyen Manh Hung, Vice General Secretary of the Vietnam Athletics Federation. “Our athletes have even played better than the gold medalists of the previous SEA Games. We expect our athletes will beat the set target.”

The 26th Southeast Asian Games will officially begin in Indonesia on November 11 and last until November 22.

Runners to get big cash-prizes

Vietnamese runners will receive a VND100 million cash-prize if they qualify for the 2012 London Olympics during competitions at the Southeast Asian Games in Indonesia from November 12-16.

The Vietnam Athletics Federation (VAF) made the announcement last week.

The 41-member athletics squad, which includes top middle-distance runner Truong Thanh Hang, sprinter Vu Thi Huong and decathlon athlete Vu Van Huyen, are scheduled to leave for Indonesia on November 10.

Hang won gold medals at SEA Games from 2005 to 2009 and is a golden hope for Vietnam at the upcoming regional competition.

The sponsorship prize was signed in a deal between VAF and the National Oil and Gas Group at a ceremony in Hanoi last week.

26th SEA Games attract largest number of journalists

Nearly 3,000 journalists, including many from Vietnam, will be present at the various venues of the 26th SEA Games in Indonesia to cover all the events, according to the Indonesia Southeast Asia Games Organizing Committee (INASOC).

This is the highest number of journalists ever to cover the Games.

The 26th SEA Games will officially take place in Jakarta and Palembang, Indonesia, from November 11-22, with the participation of over 1,500 athletes from 11 regional countries competing for 542 medals in 44 sporting events.

Press centres will be set up at competition venues, said Asdit Abdullah, an official in charge of information about this year’s SEA Games.

The Indonesian police will heighten security and deploy an explosives detection squad to prevent any terrorist attacks at the games.

TV