Vietnamese swimmer Nguyễn Huy Hoàng will train in Hungary for the SEA Games and ASIAD. Photo thethao247.vn

Swimming

HÀ NỘI  The Vietnamese national swimming team will leave for Hungary on November 1 to train for the 31st Southeast Asian (SEA) Games and 19th Asian Games (ASIAD).

The team has nine athletes including Nguyễn Huy Hoàng, Nguyễn Hữu Kim Sơn, Hoàng Quý Phước, Lê Thị Mỹ Thảo, Ngô Đình Chuyền, and Phạm Thị Vân.

Swimming star Nguyễn Thị Ánh Viên wasn’t on the list to go to Hungary, because she had previously written an application to leave the Vietnamese swimming team. Although the National Sports Administration and her military team haven’t made a final decision on her proposal, she refused to go to Hungary.

According to Trần Đức Phấn, deputy director of the National Sports Administration, right after the Vietnamese sports delegation returned from the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, the administration discussed investment and training for the swimmers.

Phấn said that the process of preparing the swimming team to train abroad was urgent. If swimmers don’t train abroad, the current training conditions in the country plus the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic will greatly affect their performance.

High task

At the 30th SEA Games in 2019 in the Philippines, Việt Nam won 11 gold medals and finished second in the region after Singapore (23 golds). The gold medallists in the 30th Games included Viên (six golds), Hoàng (two golds), Trần Hưng Nguyên (two golds), and Trần Tấn Triệu (one gold).

In Hungary, the Vietnamese swimming team will enter the intensive training process to prepare for the 31st Games. Without Viên, the members of the Vietnamese swimming team will have to double their efforts to assert their position in the regional Games.

Another important task in 2022 of the team is to prepare for the ASIAD 19 in China in September. Việt Nam has never won an ASIAN gold medal, the best achievement that Vietnamese swimmers is Hoàng's silver medal at the 2018 ASIAD in the men’s 1,500m freestyle in Indonesia.

At the Asian event in 2018, Hoàng finished with a time of 15:01.63 and only lost to the world's top swimmer Sun Yang of China. Currently, Sun Yang is banned after testing positive for a banned substance, so Hoàng’s chance to change his colour of medal at the ASIAD 2022 is great. VNS