Olympics

Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism cum VOC President Nguyễn Văn Hùng speaks at the conference on Việt Nam's sport plans in 2025 on January 2 in Hà Nội. VNS Photo Quý Lưọng

HÀ NỘI -- Việt Nam set a target of being in top three in the 33rd Southeast Asian Games, the national most important sport tast in 2025.

The Việt Nam Olympics Committee hold a conference on January 2 to discuss it's goals for 2025 in which Viet Nam 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, Việt Nam plan 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.

"Việt Nam will send more than 750 athletes to Thailand and their achievement is predicted from 80-90 gold medals to be in top three," said Đặng Hà Việt, director of the Sports Authority of Viet Nam, 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 Nguyễn Văn Hùng said Việt Nam should look towards to 2025 under Olympic motto of "Faster, Higher, Stronger".

Hùng said: "To develop well Việt Nam 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. OVN