Over the past year, Da Nang’s high-performance sports have made remarkable progress and gradually gained a foothold in both domestic and international sports arenas, thereby significantly contributing to the overall achievements of Viet Nam’s sports sector in the international arena.

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Deputy Director of the municipal Department of Culture and Sports Nguyen Trong Thao assessed that the selection of talented athletes was one of the important factors to develop high-performance sports in the city.

“In addition to issuing many preferential policies for coaches and athletes, over recent years, the city’s sports sector has paid special attention to recruiting and training sports talents for the city's high-achievement sports teams” emphasized Mr Thao.

Deputy Director Thao highlighted the importance of mass sports movements citywide in discovering and selecting excellent factors for municipal-level sports teams. From annual mass sports movements, including municipal-level sports competitions, the Phu Dong Sports Festival, some sports contests for students, and  private sports clubs-organised sports tournaments, many athletes involving table tennis, badminton, taekwondo, judo and chess have been selected for the city’s professional teams or young athletes' teams.

However, leaders of the city’s sports sector have found it difficult in selecting athletes for some specific sports that are not suitable for the qualities and physical strength of Da Nang people.

Coach of the city’s Athletics Team Tran Anh Hiep once admitted that, despite his best efforts, in some events such as short-distance running, Da Nang track and field athletes are not strong enough for competing in national tournaments. He, therefore, must recruit more talents from other localities outside Da Nang.

Director of the Da Nang Athlete Training Centre Nguyen Dong Hai, said, in the past times, Da Nang has focused on recruiting talented athletes nationwide in such aspects of boxing, traditional martial arts, boat racing, swimming, diving, wushu, and pencak silat for its high-performance sports teams.

Since 2016, the centre has developed plans to train 60 outstanding athletes and 80 potential young athletes every year. Specifically, the group of key athletes will target for at international, national, regional and continental-scale tournaments, whilst a group of potential young athletes will compete in youth tournaments.

Thanks to that, high-performance sports in Da Nang has been developed stably and sustainably, thereby significantly contributing to Viet Nam sports sector’s overall achievements at ASIAD 2018 and SEA Games 2019.

Over recent years, Da Nang high-performance sports has gradually asserted itself at national championships or international tournaments. Hopefully, Da Nang athletes, who have been selected for Viet Nam’s national teams, will continue to glorify the country’s sports sector in upcoming sporting events such as SEA Games 31 or ASIAD 2022.

Reporting by NGUYEN AN – Translating by M.DUNG