From potential boy to national champion, SEA Games
At the 2025 national table tennis tournament, athlete Dinh Anh Hoang of the T&T People's Public Security team deposed veteran grandmaster Nguyen Anh Tu to win the gold medal in the men's singles event. This is also the first national championship for the Dak Lak tennis player.
Dinh Anh Hoang's success cannot be separated from the role of coach Vu Manh Cuong - the teacher who discovered and accompanied him for more than a decade.
Many years ago, during a youth tournament, coach Manh Cuong saw Hoang have outstanding professional ability, so he invited him to join the Hanoi T&T training center. After only a few years of basic training, Hoang quickly rose to become a mainstay of the team, continuously winning medals in youth and national tournaments.
Not only Dinh Anh Hoang, many other talents such as Le Dinh Duc or Tran Mai Ngoc were also actively selected by coach Vu Manh Cuong across the country, bringing them to "growth" at T&T club from the early days.
For more than 10 years, this dedicated teacher has been both a coach and a second father taking care of his students in both training and daily life. That sacrifice and enthusiasm have created a solid foundation for Mr. Hien's "hammer and rooster" to reach the top.
Dinh Anh Hoang once shared that he learned a lot from his teacher's training methods: "I see that Uncle Cuong is a person of passion and strictness with the profession, so I am well-educated. He told me a lot about the competitive mentality, teaching me how to stabilize my spirit when entering a high-performance career..."
Indeed, besides the professional factor, a strong competitive mentality is the difference that Hoang has discovered from his veteran teacher.
Right in the 2025 national men's singles final, the tennis player born in 2001 played bravely, no longer being "armed" against his senior Anh Tu like in previous confrontations. He entered the match confidently and attacked overwhelmingly from the first set, surprising the opponent.
In addition to this achievement, before that, in 2023, Dinh Anh Hoang and Tran Mai Ngoc also brought home a historic gold medal for Vietnamese table tennis at the 32nd SEA Games for men and women.
Launching from the public-private model
The connection between coach Vu Manh Cuong and Dinh Anh Hoang shows a bigger picture, which is the combined sports model between the People's Public Security (CAND) and T&T Group.
Mr. Hien was the one who recruited coach Manh Cuong from Hai Duong to Hanoi in 2007, placing the first bricks for the "cast" of private table tennis in Hanoi T&T.
With the philosophy of having to come from youth training, Mr. Hien gave coach Manh Cuong the entire right to build a team with strong investment in facilities and regimes for athletes. Thanks to that, over the past decade, Hanoi T&T table tennis club has won 13 national gold medals, 75 youth gold medals, contributing many players to the Vietnam national team.
When the CAND T&T club was established in 2024, Mr. Cuong and his students such as Anh Hoang, Dinh Duc, Mai Ngoc were motivated. This coordination immediately created a boost, especially the 3 gold medals at this year's national championship.
Coach Vu Manh Cuong commented that the support of T&T Group has brought about significant changes, helping CAND T&T club overcome difficulties in mechanisms and funding to reach further in the future.
It can be said that the story of Vu Manh Cuong and his team - Dinh Anh Hoang is a typical model for the combination of personal efforts and right direction guidance. The difficult 10-year journey has now reaped its sweet fruits and will certainly have more success in the future.
The pair of parallels Anh Hoang - Dinh Duc
Under the leadership of coach Vu Manh Cuong, Dinh Anh Hoang and Le Dinh Duc have become the number 1 male couple in Vietnamese table tennis at present. This duo has dominated the national men's doubles event for 6 consecutive years.
Le Dinh Duc also matured from the T&T workshop, alongside Anh Hoang from a young age. He is considered a tennis player with a solid playing style and good read of the game.
In the 2025 men's team final, Duc played impressively when defeating Anh Tu (the number 1 tennis player in Vietnam at that time) with a score of 3-0, creating psychological momentum to help the CAND T&T team win the final.
