Vietnamese brothers head into UK talent show final

By Nguyen Quy, Minh Anh   June 2, 2018 | 06:26 pm PT
Vietnamese brothers head into UK talent show final
Giang Quoc Nghiep and Giang Quoc Co perform their gravity defying act. Photo by VnExpress/Hai An
Their incredible balancing act wins admiration of people from around the world.

The usual suspects have reached the final of the Britian’s Got Talent 2018. There are singers, and there are comedians, and there is a comedian who sings.

But standing things on their head this season are two brothers from Vietnam, who go head to head in ways that have made people gasp with admiration and provoked one of the judges into declaring them the winners already.

The Giang brothers, Giang Quoc Nghiep, 28, and Giang Quoc Co, 33, are natives of Ho Chi Minh City. They got into the act almost two decades ago through their grandfather, performing in a circus, and while they have performed in many countries since, their first claim to global fame came in 2016, when they set a new Guinness World Record ‘for the most stairs climbed while balancing a person on the head,’ easily beating the previous record of 26 stairs in a minute set by Chinese couple Tang Tao and Su Zengxian in 2014. Nghiep and Co climbed 90 stairs in 52 seconds at the Cathedral of Girona in Spain.

In the semifinals of the Britain’s Got Talent competition this year, the brothers went one step further in their acrobatic, gymnastic daring, repeating their balancing act blindfolded, climbing down several steps and running towards the judges, then doing it in reverse when everyone thought that the act was over.

“That was unbelievable. Everyone else should go home,” exclaimed Alesha Dixon, one of the two female judges of one of the most watched shows on television. The other female judge, Amanda Holden, remarked that they could have just seen the winners of the 2018 edition.

The judges’ reactions have been matched by fans all over, with one commenting on the UK news site Metro: If the Giang Brothers don’t go through to the final, I may never watch this show ever again.”

The Giang Brothers are one of 10 finalists who will perform live on June 3, but they have already won the hearts of millions of fans who will watch their next act with bated breath, because the Vietnamese siblings are putting their lives on the line, literally.

Nghiep was quoted by the U.K. magazine as saying he went to the hospital to check his neck five days before the semifinal competition.

“The doctor advised me to stop my career. But it’s just advice, I can choose to keep doing it. The next time I fall off, my neck could break.”

 
 
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