Vietnamese Sports and the Challenge of the Olympic Top 50: Reaching the World

Women's volleyball played well in the world championship, football participated in the World Cup in women's, futsal, U20 events. Billiards has World Cup and world titles, badminton has players in the top 10, 20..., never before has the ability to reach far of Vietnamese sports (TTVN) been as open as now...

Vietnam has many sports that have reached the world level, the peak of which is the Olympic gold medal in shooting at Rio 2016. However, there is a very remarkable detail: More and more world-class sports are being developed with social factors, with a professional orientation. That is truly a very valuable thing.

In fact, it is a welcome trend and is becoming more and more familiar. Taking the story of women's volleyball, although most of Vietnam's clubs are not yet completely professional, the quality of socialization in this sport has existed for a long time.

Volleyball, especially women's, has the most international tournaments and the role of the Federation is very clear, the same with football. Obviously, if not well socialized, it is very difficult for volleyball to create continuous quality competition opportunities for athletes, thereby forming a level and character regularly so that when approaching a world- class tournament, everything becomes easy.

Not counting badminton or billiards, there are currently many sports whose development is based on social work, even though at one time no one thought it would go far, such as golf or most recently pickleball. Let alone how far we will go, what is easy to see is that the prospect of reaching world-class level, or participating in professional events, is completely within the reach of Vietnamese athletes. It is difficult to say so if these are sports that are still in the "milk" of subsidies, cared for by investment sources from the budget.

The success of Vietnamese women's volleyball in recent years has a very important role played by the Vietnam Volleyball Federation. Photo: HT

In the 2030-2045 sports development strategy, most of the goals are aimed at the Asian Games or the Olympics. This is not difficult to understand when the strategy's project is implemented by the sports management agency, based on the budget's investment capacity. However, there also needs to be another plan for the so-called "world class". It is not a story about achievements, it is difficult to give specific goals, but it plays a strategic role in the development of a sport.

We can visualize this through the example of football. Goals such as participating in the World Cup or being in the top 10 of the continent will not be completely convincing if there are no Vietnamese players playing abroad, especially in the major professional leagues of the continent and especially Europe.

The presence of athletes in these tournaments, or professional rankings, is an undeniable affirmation of class. A strong sport does not necessarily have world champions, but when there are many world-class athletes, it is certainly a strong sport.

Therefore, it is necessary to promote more strongly the socialization factor, or more importantly, the professional nature of Vietnamese sports in development strategies, considering it as a core factor. For example, at the SEA Games, it is necessary to evaluate development based on the number of sports and the number of athletes participating through socialization activities. In other words, the State budget should focus on sports that are difficult to attract investment or spend most of it on high-class facilities.

Meanwhile, there needs to be more mechanisms to attract socialization, put pressure on Federations/Associations on operational efficiency and promote athletes' efforts in world-level tournaments, even when they do not create any specific achievements.

Source: https://bvhttdl.gov.vn/the-thao-viet-nam-va-thach-thuc-top-50-olympic-cham-ngo-the-gioi-20250827092113306.htm