Nguyen Thi Oanh and the My Dinh Afternoon: Vietnamese Women's Athletics Through the Data Sheet

On the afternoon of May 15, 2026, on the 3000-metre steeplechase track at My Dinh National Stadium, Nguyen Thi Oanh crossed the finish line before the applause had even settled. Less than two hours later, she returned to the starting line of the 1500 metres. The rest between the two races was shorter than an ordinary person's lunch break. She won both.

I sat in section B of the stands, a hastily printed results sheet in my hand, and noted something that appeared in no news bulletin: the total time she actually raced that afternoon added up to less than a single half of a men's football match. And yet I had to wait more than forty years in this profession before I saw a Vietnamese crowd rise to its feet for a female track and field athlete.

Athletics is the foundational sport of every Games, but in Vietnam it lives inside a familiar paradox: the highest results, the smallest budget, the least light. At recent SEA Games, the Vietnamese delegation has repeatedly topped the medal table thanks to athletics, yet most of those medals come from women's events. Names like Nguyen Thi Huyen, Bui Thi Thu Thao, Le Tu Chinh and Nguyen Thi Oanh quietly carry the points, while the coverage they receive tends to appear on competition day and vanish the next.

Looking back, Vietnamese women's athletics once went almost invisible in the press. Through the 1990s and 2000s, athletes who won medals at continental level were often mentioned only in a few lines from the state news agency. That invisibility did not come from a lack of results, but from a quiet prejudice in the newsroom: athletics does not sell advertising.

The structure of the competition creates a problem of its own. At many SEA Games, organisers pack several women's events into a single session to save television time. An athlete entered in three distances may have to run two finals within a few hours. This almost never happens at major international meets, where the schedule is spaced according to World Athletics standards. In other words, the results of these Vietnamese women are measured against a stricter yardstick than usual.

The article that was rejected that year is now the scar I cherish most. In 2026, when the whole newsroom poured itself into the men's World Cup, I secretly wrote about a women's football tournament and was cut because it was "off-topic". That rejection taught me that women's sport does not lack stories, only people willing to print them. Since then, whenever I sit before a results sheet, I remind myself to read it the way I would read a text that had been dropped on the floor.

An analysis of Oanh's results sheet reveals a clear pattern. She does not belong to the sprint type with a high peak speed, but to the type with a lactate tolerance and a between-race recovery capacity among the best in the region. In the 3000-metre steeplechase, the deciding factor is not raw speed but water-jump technique: every landing in the wrong posture burns energy that cannot be recovered, and the number of barriers in a single lap is enough to turn a small error into a ten-metre gap at the finish.

Looking at how she positions herself around the track, her tactics are clearly cumulative. Over the first two laps she sits about ten metres behind the leaders, keeping her heart rate in a comfortable zone. By the third lap she has closed the gap to five metres. On the final lap she moves ahead at the bend and holds the position to the line. That distribution forces rivals to choose: either accelerate early and fade, or accept being passed.

In my experience of watching races, I always divide a track session into three layers: technique, physiology and psychology. Oanh wins at the third. When rivals begin to accelerate on the final lap, she does not answer immediately but holds her rhythm, waiting until the last 200 metres to open up. That way of running demands a rare calm, something a data sheet cannot measure but every coach can see.

Placed in a wider picture, Vietnamese women's athletics is in a transition phase. The generation of Nguyen Thi Huyen, a two-time Olympian in the 400 metres and 400-metre hurdles, has passed its peak. The next generation, including Oanh, Tu Chinh and a few young faces from the Bac Giang, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City centres, is not yet deep enough to fill the gap if two pillars are lost at once. This is a structural risk: an athletics programme that depends on a few outstanding individuals collapses very quickly when those individuals stop.

In statistical terms, the contribution of women's athletics to Vietnam's overall medal haul at recent SEA Games has tended to be larger than that of any other sport. That share has been stable for years, which shows it is not a passing phenomenon but a long-term structure of Vietnamese sport.

In the regional balance, Thailand and the Philippines have long been direct rivals over the middle and long distances. Thailand has a stronger training tradition in the 800 and 1500 metres, while the Philippines has risen in the steeplechase thanks to a few individuals trained abroad. Vietnam holds a solid position in the 3000-metre steeplechase and the 5000 metres, but that advantage is thin and depends on the form of a handful of people.

On the rules side, Vietnamese athletics relies on two paths to a place at a major meet: meeting a minimum qualifying standard, or accumulating points through the world ranking system. Both require athletes to compete internationally on a regular basis, something a tight budget prevents many from doing. A single entry to a continental event can cost the equivalent of several months' salary for an entire coaching unit. This is a systemic bottleneck, beyond the reach of any individual.

In sports medicine, the compressed competition load creates real injury risk. The Achilles tendon, the knee and the foot are the sites of greatest load in the steeplechase. When an athlete must run several distances in a short time, the muscles' recovery time is insufficient for regeneration, and accumulated injuries tend to appear in the most important year of a career. Team medical staff understand this, but the schedule is not theirs to decide.

As for the training environment, most Vietnamese female athletes train on grounds that are modest by international standards: no regulation synthetic track, no recovery room, no dedicated nutritionist. At many centres, the coach doubles as manager, nurse and cook. That versatility is admirable, but it reveals a system that has not been professionalised to the right degree.

The youth development system also has a recruitment problem. Many families do not want their daughters to pursue athletics because of low income and an uncertain future. Those with talent often switch to sports with bigger prizes, or leave sport altogether to focus on their studies.

In public opinion, each women's athletics gold tends to be greeted by a short wave of emotion that then fades. The pressure of expectation on these women is enormous, while post-competition support is small. This is the gap between expectation and investment, a form of psychological risk rarely mentioned but directly affecting performance.

What few mention is that Vietnamese women's athletics is undervalued not for a lack of results, but because their results are hard to sell. A men's football gold can bring dozens of sponsorship deals; a women's athletics gold usually buys only a short news line. The commercial value and the competitive value of women's sport are mismatched to an absurd degree, and that gap does not reflect the quality of the sport.

I once watched a sponsor withdraw from a women's athletics meet because there was "no television audience", even though that same sponsor had never spent a single dong promoting it. The circle feeds itself: no promotion leads to no audience, no audience leads to no sponsorship, no sponsorship leads to even less promotion. Breaking that circle needs no miracle, only a sponsor willing to go first.

In women's football, I do not look for victory; I look for liberation. In athletics, I look for the same thing: the right to be recognised for true worth. I am old now, but every call from them makes me young again, and every results sheet they leave behind convinces me that the next generation will not have to wait as long as I did.

That My Dinh afternoon taught me that Vietnamese women's sport does not need more praise, but more published data and more transparent sponsorship contracts. The pitch taught me that there are lessons that are never rejected. The question that remains is not how fast these women can run, but whether we will pay for them to run at all.