Achievement is important
The Vietnamese sports delegation attending the 2024 Paris Olympics recently had 4 foreign coaches and experts joining to directly instruct the athletes in their competitions: Park Chung-gun (South Korea, shooting), Park Chae-soon (South Korea, archery), Hariawan (Indonesia, badminton), Joseph Donnelly (Australia, rowing). Currently, they are still working in Vietnam.
Expert Park Chung-gun's contract expired on August 31. The sports industry is considering working specifically with coach Park and the professional department in charge of shooting (Department of Physical Education and Sports) to renew the labor contract.
According to the assessment, expert Park Chung-gun is also responsible for professional training in shooting, especially the content of pistols, the sports industry still wants this expert to work in Vietnam. Along with the expert of the Vietnamese archery team, Mr. Park Chung-gun is the highest paid expert (in high-performance sports teams other than football).
When inviting expert Hariawan back to Vietnam, one of the goals that Vietnamese badminton clearly stated was that the expert would build a training program for young athletes so that we could have a sustainable professional force. If we have a well-trained force right from the youth level, the Vietnamese badminton team will have people who are prepared for the future, especially the SEA Games and ASIAD arenas.
Speaking to the press in a meeting in June 2024, Director of the Department of Physical Training and Sports Dang Ha Viet said: “It is not easy for us to find good experts who love the country and the Vietnamese people. Therefore, when there are experts with the right expertise and are willing to put all their abilities into training to help Vietnamese players become more successful, it is always something that the sports industry appreciates.”
How to use effectively
After the 2024 Paris Olympics, the Department of Sports and Physical Training has made specific professional assessments that many sports have begun to orient themselves by hiring more suitable foreign experts. For example, athletics will invite German expert Gunter Lange back to Vietnam to cooperate in a 4-year coaching contract.
During the 2020 and 2024 Olympics, this expert worked with Ugandan athletics and had athletes win silver and gold medals. Mr. Gunter Lange will be in Vietnam in October 2024.
The swimming team has reached an agreement to hire a foreign expert to work long-term in Vietnam to directly train Nguyen Huy Hoang, Tran Hung Nguyen, Pham Thanh Bao and a number of key players.
Vietnamese sports build key sports to invest in, but people must be the focus. In particular, a good athlete needs a suitable coach. If some sports in some events have limited capacity domestic coaches, the sports industry must be determined to find foreign experts to do better.
In weightlifting, from the 2012 Olympics to the 2024 Olympics, the coaching staff of the Vietnamese weightlifting team only used domestic coaches and many athletes won places in this prestigious arena. However, medal results have not yet come to Vietnamese weightlifting (the only medal was a bronze medal by Tran Le Quoc Toan for the 2012 Olympics).
The sports industry is also considering hiring foreign experts for the Vietnamese weightlifting team to train at the National Sports Training Center in Hanoi. The organizers of the 20th Asian Games in 2026 and the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics (USA) have made a preliminary list of events to be held.
Now, Vietnamese sports must start focusing on professional preparation after drawing on experiences from the 19th ASIAD and the 2024 Paris Olympics, so that we do not slow down.
