At the 32nd SEA Games in Cambodia (May 2023), athletes Tran Mai Ngoc and Dinh Anh Hoang excellently won the gold medal in the mixed doubles event. This is an impressive achievement, because after 26 years of waiting, Vietnamese table tennis has another gold medal in mixed doubles at a Southeast Asian Games.
After this tournament, Vietnamese table tennis continues to compete at ASIAD 19 (September 2023), but all athletes in 7 events did not make it into the medal group.
Even in the qualifying round for the 2024 Paris Olympics in Southeast Asia (May 2024), the Vietnamese table tennis team did not win an official place at the Olympics. Only player Nguyen Khoa Dieu Khanh made it to the final of the women's singles event but lost the match and lost the Olympic spot.
In fact, since last year's SEA Games, the Vietnamese table tennis team has not had many overseas training trips. Previously, the team sent Tran Mai Ngoc, Dinh Anh Hoang, Le Dinh Duc, Nguyen Thi Nga and Nguyen Khoa Dieu Khanh to the US for training and friendly matches from June 3-15, 2023). However, such training trips are not maintained regularly.
This more or less affects the process of improving the athletes' expertise. Mai Ngoc or Anh Hoang - the young players themselves - also need to change their training environment regularly to learn from the great table tennis backgrounds in the world.
Coach Vu Manh Cuong - head coach of the team T&T-CAND table tennis and coach of the Vietnamese table tennis team, said: "Japan and China are the places with the best table tennis movement in the world, the coaching staff and the coaching staff plan to send Mai Ngoc for 2-3 years to improve his skills, to be on par with Southeast Asia and the continent.
In addition, regarding overseas training, T&T Group and the CAND Sports Association are also planning to send athletes of the team to China for training for 2 months at the end of the year, preparing for the next tournaments.
In the coming years, according to the plan, we will also send the best athletes abroad for regular training, to be able to meet domestic and international tasks such as SEA Games, ASIAD...".
Regarding the long-term foreign training plan, Tran Mai Ngoc said: "China is always the number 1 power. They always train with very high intensity. Chinese athletes are better than us in terms of physical strength, good diet, sleep, rest and compete abroad a lot. If Vietnamese athletes only compete domestically, it will be difficult to progress. In addition, in the national team, I think there should be a coach or foreign expert".
