VietNamNet Bridge – The 2012 Olympics finished and Vietnam did not win any medal. The Olympic is a playing field that is beyond Vietnam’s strength, but if Vietnam invested more seriously in the games, the result would have been different.

Weight-lifter Quoc Toan.

The most important factor for the success of any country at the Olympic Games is preparation. Other countries began preparing for the games after the end of the 2008 Olympics while Vietnam did this task in several months. In this short period of time, a lot of problems happened.

In his latest statement, former head of the Elite Sports Department, Mr. Nguyen Hong Minh criticized Vietnam’s preparation for the games. “No country prepares for the Olympics like Vietnam does,” Minh said.

Minh’s statement is not tough. Let’s review how Vietnamese athletes prepared for the event.

Gymnast Phan Thi Ha Thanh, who was praised “a miracle of Vietnam’s gymnastics and sports,” won an official card to the games. This was the first time a Vietnamese gymnast achieved this. However, Ha Thanh was not fully equipped for the games.

In gymnastics, the most important thing for raising a gymnast’s achievement is heightening the difficulty of exercises. Ha Thanh won a bronze medal at the world gymnastics champs and a card to the Olympics because she performed a more difficult exercise than her rivals.

However, athletes cannot raise the difficulty of exercises by their own. They need assistance of coaches and a necessary period of time for practice.

Ha Thanh had to practice alone after her Chinese coach returned home to take care his ailing wife. After that, a coach of the Hanoi gymnastic team was assigned to coach Ha Thanh, but the coach could only help Thanh avoid injury, not improve the difficulty of exercises.

Two shooters, Hoang Xuan Vinh and Hoang Ngoc, were trained for several days before the Olympics.

A North Korean coach was invited to teach wrestler Nguyen Thi Lua but he did not go to Vietnam, so Lua had to drill with Vietnamese coaches.

The track-and-field team did not have any overseas training courses.

It was better for badminton, taekwondo, fencing and judo teams because they had overseas training courses and foreign coaches for a short period of time before the games.

Until the end of the World Weightlifting Championships, Vietnam defined its representative at the Olympics. Earlier, the team was trained in Bulgaria but when the center of investment was not determined, the investment was ineffective.

Vietnam’s preparation for the Olympics was in trouble right before the start of the games. The gymnastics and track-and-field teams went to the UK for drilling but until they arrived at the training center, they knew that the center did not have enough equipment. Athletes had to travel nearly 100km each day for training.

Vietnam did not carefully prepare for the games because sports officials thought that it was a success to get cards to the games and they did not care for competing for medals, former head of the Elite Sports Department, Mr. Nguyen Hong Minh, analyzed.

Gymnast Ha Thanh.

It is said that investment was not poured in the right athletes. Instead of spending a lot of money in runners Thanh Hang and Vu Thi Huong to help them get Olympic cards (they did not), if Vietnam invest in weightlifting and shooting, it would have had medals.

Vietnam did not seriously prepare for the event. Immediately after the 2008 Beijing Olympics, many countries began preparing for the 2012 games. Some countries even invested in their “strategic cards” ten years before the game to win medals.

It is not a surprise for Vietnam’s failure at the games. However, Vietnam has not learnt lessons after each Olympics.

It’s time for Vietnam to target the regional and international arenas, not the Southeast Asian Games.

Compiled by Thanh Tung