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In the men's 61kg weightlifting event in Paris on Aug. 7, Trinh Van Vinh failed in all three attempts and was eliminated early. In his final attempt, he lifted the weight above his head but lacked the strength to stabilize it, causing him to fall backward.
Vinh's performance reflected Vietnam's struggles at the 2024 Paris Olympics, where the team failed to meet its medal target.
Just a year ago, Vietnam topped the medal tally at the 32nd SEA Games in Cambodia, winning a total of 355 medals, including 136 gold. Vietnam secured 28 more gold medals than Thailand, marking the second consecutive time topping the SEA Games ranking.
However, Vietnam's achievements at the Asian Games and the Olympics tell a different story.
At the 2022 Asian Games, which was postponed to 2023 due to Covid-19, Vietnam ranked sixth in Southeast Asia. In the 2024 Paris Olympics, Vietnam was the only country to fail to win any medals among the six strongest Southeast Asian countries.
Vietnam is not only far behind other Southeast Asian delegations in this year's performance but also shows signs of decline compared to previous events.
The peak of Vietnamese sports at the Olympics was in 2016, when shooter Hoang Xuan Vinh won one gold and one silver medal. That year, Vietnam had its highest number of athletes on the world stage, 23. Since then, the number of athletes has gradually decreased.
Vietnam returned to the Olympics in 1988, failing to win a medal for three events before female taekwondo athlete Tran Hieu Ngan secured a silver at Sydney 2000. The number of Vietnamese athletes qualifying for the Olympics increased until 2016.
After Vinh's victory in Rio de Janeiro, Vietnam rose to third place in Southeast Asia, with only Thailand and Indonesia having previously won Olympic gold medals.
However, Vietnam went back-to-back without medals for the first time since 1996 in Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024. During this period, the Philippines won three Olympic gold medals.
At Paris 2024, Southeast Asian countries won a total of 15 medals, including five gold. The Philippines won two gold medals thanks to Carlos Yulo's double in gymnastics. Thailand won a gold medal with taekwondo athlete Panipak Wongpattanakit successfully defending her title in the women's 49kg event.
Indonesia secured gold medals for the first time outside badminton, with Veddriq Leonardo in speed climbing and Rizki Juniansyah in men's 73kg weightlifting.
Weightlifting has historically brought the most Olympic medals to Southeast Asian countries, with a total of 38, including seven gold. All three Thai weightlifters competing in the Paris Olympics won medals - two silver and one bronze.
This competition is divided by weight class, which suits the smaller physiques of Southeast Asian athletes. Vietnam has also won two Olympic weightlifting medals, a silver by Hoang Anh Tuan in 2008 and a bronze by Tran Le Quoc Toan four years later. At SEA Games 32, Vietnam won four weightlifting gold medals, second only to Indonesia's five golds, but this achievement was not replicated at the Olympics.
Southeast Asian athletes have won Olympic medals in 14 sports, most of which have different weight classes such as weightlifting, boxing and taekwondo, or traditional Asian sports like table tennis and badminton, or sports that do not require height, such as gymnastics, diving, shooting or archery.
The only two athletics medals belong to the Philippines, but they were achieved nearly 100 years ago.
Most of Southeast Asia's medals at the 2024 Olympics are not in new sports but rather in areas where the countries have focused on their inherent strengths based on the aforementioned factors. Before Juniansyah's gold medal in weightlifting for Indonesia, they had won 15 medals in this sport, making the 21-year-old weightlifter's achievement predictable.
Thailand won its first taekwondo medal in Athens 2004, four years after Vietnamese Ngan's silver.
But since then, they have consistently won medals in this sport, in the women's 49kg category at the Olympics, so Panipak's consecutive gold medals are also not surprising. Meanwhile, Vietnamese taekwondo has not won any more medals at the Olympics after Ngan.
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Thailand's Panipak Wongpattanakit celebrates the women's 49kg taekwondo gold medal at the Paris Olympics on Aug. 7, 2024. Photo by Reuters |
Another effective strategy for Southeast Asian countries could be focusing on events with fewer competition or less interest from other countries.
The men's speed climbing event where Veddriq Leonardo won gold for Indonesia had only 11 countries participating. In the women’s event of this sport, Rajiah Sallsabillah almost won a medal for Indonesia, missing out by just 0.03 seconds in the semifinals.
Speed climbing was introduced to the Olympics for the first time in Paris, where athletes competed in a knockout format that required only a few seconds to complete. The smallest mistake could lead to elimination and this opens opportunities for many countries to win medals.
