Vietnam focuses on top three, possibly top 2 at 33rd SEA Games
Vietnam set a target of being in top three in the 33rd Southeast Asian Games, the national most important sport task in 2025.
The Vietnam Olympics Committee (VOC) held a conference on January 2 to discuss it's goals for 2025 in which Vietnam will take part in three major sport competitions.
The 33rd SEA Games will be held on December 9-20 in Thailand with 569 events of 53 sports.
According to VOC, Vietnam expects to enter top three and even top two if possible.
Among medals grabbed in Thailand, many of them should be from Olympic and Asian Games sports.
Vietnam will send more than 750 athletes to Thailand and their achievement is predicted from 80-90 gold medals to be in top three, said Dang Ha Viet, Director of the Sports Authority of Vietnam, adding that to reach top two they must take more than 90 golds.
Two other competitions are the Asian Youth Games in October or November in Bahrain and Asian Winter Games on February 7-14 in China.
Speaking at the conference, Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism cum VOC President Nguyen Van Hung said Vietnam should look towards to 2025 under Olympic motto of Faster, Higher, Stronger.
Hung said: To develop well Vietnam should go sreadily step by step, reaching regional and continental levels before approaching the world arena.
There can not have a big leap. In sport, it takes persistent practice and strong effort to move up.
Winning and losing is normal. Winners shouldn't be arrogant while losers shouldn't be discouraged but work harder for better.
The Minister asked sport managers of all levels to focus on the Thai SEA Games so that the Vietnamese delegation would earn highest results, maintaining it's position in the region, eyeing to bigger arena of Asian Games in 2026.
For bigger tournaments, we have to invest strongly on Olympic sports to have chances winning medals in Asian and world competitions.
In other plans in 2025, VOC continues to build and implement sport activities for everyone, sports management courses, technical courses for coaches of table tennis, cycling, athletics, volleyball, tennis, swimming and drowning prevention programmes for children.
VOC needs to strengthen cooperation with international sports organisations, national Olympic committees around the world to provide intensive training courses to Vietnamese athletes for high achievements and to reach Olympic level.
