After 7 years of leaving her Thang Binh poor rural district in Quang Nam Province for Da Nang to join the city's high-achievement sports squad, 24 year-old Nguyen Thi Ai Van, has brought home many awards from national and international sports events.

Ai Van (standing on podium No 1) during an awards ceremony for winners in the First International Vietnamese Martial Arts Festival in March 2018

Being the youngest in her family with 8 children, Van has a great passion for martial arts as her 2 older brothers were martial arts instructors.

Therefore, she decided to follow her brothers to practice martial arts, but not long after she had to stop pursuing her dream because one of her two brothers said goodbye to martial arts in order to work away from home.

When being a Year 10 pupil, Van and some of her friends who shared the same passion for martial arts with her together registered for a martial arts class in the province’s Ha Lam Town which is around 7 km far away from their houses.

“In the beginning time, I and my friends were very eager to ride bicycles passing through the rice paddy fields every evening to attend the martial arts class. Sometime later, my friends stopped attending the class because of a far distance”, Van said.   

Thanks to her burning passion, briskness and decisiveness in training programmes and competitions, Van has received high appreciation from her martial arts teacher in Ha Lam Town. Then, he introduced Van to coach Huynh Duc Bay, Head of Vovinam Martial Arts at the Da Nang Athlete Training Centre.

After expressing her strong aspiration for attending martial arts training courses in Da Nang, Van faced opposition from her family members. However, Van tried to persuade her parents to allow her to realise her dream of studying martial arts whilst ensuring her regular attendance at school.

As soon as getting permision from her parents, Van went to Da Nang to attend training programmes at the city’s Athlete Training Centre whilst keeping her studying at the Ngo Quyen Senior High School in Son Tra District.

When she was a Year 12 pupil, Van won silver medals at the Youth Martial Arts Competition and National Martial Arts Championship. This was her first success beyond her expectations because she had to be in strict training and academic programmes in a short time.

Despite competing in many martial arts contests, Van has made great efforts to be enrolled into the Da Nang University of Physical Education and Sports.

Over the past 7 years, Van has become a professional traditional martial artist, having contributed many medals to the city’s high-performance sports team.

In particular, she won the national martial arts championships in the women's 48kg event in 3 consecutive years from 2015 - 2017. 

In addition, Van also bagged gold medals at the Asian Beach Games (ABG5) in 2016, and in the world championship in 2018.

Recently, Van received Certificates of Merit from the Prime Minister and the municipal People's Committee in recognition of her significant achievements for the city’s high performance sports over recent years.