What happened to the first female champion of Road to Olympia?

In 1999, the program Road to Olympia was first broadcast on television, opening a long journey of intellectual playground for high school students across the country.

Tran Ngoc Minh is the first female champion of Road to Olympia.

In that first season, contestant Tran Ngoc Minh - a female student from Nguyen Binh Khiem High School for the Gifted ( Vinh Long ) excellently won the laurel wreath, becoming the first female champion in the history of the program.

In the final, Ngoc Minh overcame three strong opponents, Nguyen Thanh Vinh, Nguyen Dac Duong and Phan Minh Chau, achieving a total score of 325, 75 points higher than the runner-up. Her achievement at that time impressed the whole country with her confidence, composure and solid knowledge base.

After winning, Ngoc Minh received a full scholarship to study abroad at Swinburne University of Technology (Australia). Throughout her studies, she continuously achieved impressive results. She graduated in the top 5% of outstanding students.

Not only that, Ngoc Minh is also one of the few students who continue to receive a full scholarship for the PhD program in information networks at Swinburne University.

After a period of hard work and effort, Ngoc Minh successfully conquered his doctorate degree. With a solid academic foundation, since 2013, Ngoc Minh started working at a large Australian telecommunications corporation.

According to some sources, in 2019, she held the position of Marketing Director of the charity organization “Open Your Hearts” - a charity organization specializing in helping disabled and unfortunate children. One of the outstanding projects of this group is to donate and help Vietnamese children infected with Agent Orange.

In January 2013, when her career was stable, Ngoc Minh got married to her partner and now lives in Melbourne. The couple has a son and a daughter. Although living in a foreign land, the former champion still preserves Vietnamese cultural values in family life. During the Lunar New Year, she often dresses her children in ao dai, wraps banh chung, and gives them lucky money at the beginning of the year, as a way to help them not forget their roots.

She currently has a happy life with her husband and two children abroad.

More than two decades after winning the laurel wreath, Tran Ngoc Minh is still remembered by Olympia audiences as an intelligent, humble and determined female student.

She chooses a private life, rarely appears in the media, and hardly shares her private life on social networks. Her personal Facebook page is also set to friends, blocking posts and personal photos.