National swimming team gets trouble in USA
The undercurrent at the national swimming team

Quy Phuoc (right) and his coach in the US.
In 2011, Phuoc broke the B standard of the Olympic 2012 for men’s 100m butterfly. His goal is to attain the A standard to get a ticket to the Olympics. However, the 3-month training course in the US, which was expected to help improve Phuoc’s achievement, was useless for Phuoc.
This trip was problematic at the beginning when Phuoc faced difficulties in getting a visa to the US. He went to the US ten days late.
After that, Vietnam’s leading swimmer could not register for the Indianapolis Grand Prix in mid-January because Phuoc and his coach were not good enough at English to fill applications.
Phuoc’s goal to practice with coach Sergio Lopez, the manager of the swimming club at Bolles School in the US failed.
According to a report by Vietnamese coach Dang Anh Tuan, Vietnamese swimmers, including Phuoc, did not make progress because they did not understand the American coach’s instruction, while Vietnamese coaches were not allowed to join American colleagues in training.
The Vietnamese team moved to another club, where coach Tuan could directly train his students together with American trainers. Since then, Phuoc has had to practice alone.
Before going to the US, coach Nguyen Tan Quang, Phuoc’s coach from Da nang, said that he did not know about the training conditions in the US. He only thought that it would be better than in Vietnam. In fact, the disagreement between Quang and his colleague, Dang Anh Tuan, the coach of the national swimming team, was a big problem of the Vietnamese swimming team in the US.
The trip to the US is said to be a big mistake of Phuoc and Quang.
To correct the fault, they will return to Vietnam and then go to China, where they practiced in the last two years, for drilling.
S. Tung