04:10, 11/10/2017

Positive change in cross-country movement in districts

The cross-country competition within the framework of Khanh Hoa's Eighth Physical Training and Sports Festival taking place on October 8 partly showed a positive change in the district-level cross-country movement in Khanh Hoa Province. 
 

The cross-country competition within the framework of Khanh Hoa’s Eighth Physical Training and Sports Festival taking place on October 8 partly showed a positive change in the district-level cross-country movement in Khanh Hoa Province. 
 
Around ten years ago, Khanh Hoa’s athletics was well-known in Vietnam for having many excellent athletes who achieved medals for Vietnam’s sports delegation at the regional tournaments. However, nowadays, Khanh Hoa’s athletics in general and cross-country in particular have not developed well as before mainly because of the financial difficulties. In the circumstance that it is difficult to recruit new athletes, the provincial Department of Culture and Sports holds yearly province-level tournament in order to create playground for the players at the districts. 
 
This year’s cross-country competition of the provincial Eighth Physical Training and Sports Festival unlike the previous ones aimed to look for outstanding players for the provincial teams to join the National Physical Training and Sports Festival 2018. Therefore, the participating units had paid more attention to prepare for their team. 
 
The 2017 cross-country competition had the participation of 96 players from eight districts, towns and cities in the province. The players competed in the professional team event (men’s 7km, women’s 3km) and junior team event (men’s 5km, women’s 3km).
 
Through the tournament, the players of some districts showed their fierce competition to the players of the units which have often been the strong ones at this tournament like Ninh Hoa Town, Nha Trang City and Khanh Vinh District. For example, in professional team event, Cam Lam District’s players won gold medals in both men’s and women’s category. The young players of Dien Khanh District also showed their improvement after many efforts to maintain the movement. They achieved female-team gold medal and male-team bronze medal.

 

 
At the end of the tournament, Ninh Hoa team bagged the first place award; Nha Trang and Dien Khanh were the first and second runner-up respectively.
 
Hoang Thi Huyen Nga, Head Coach of Khanh Hoa athletics team, said that there were not many differences in achievement among the 2017 participants. The units sent many young promising players to this tournament. 
 
According to Nga, Khanh Hoa’s athletics in general and cross-country in particular is facing many difficulties in recruiting and training players for the provincial team. Two among many reasons are that the parents do not allow their children to leave school to pursue sport career and that the policies for athletics and cross-country are not good as other sports like football, tennis, volleyball, etc. Under this circumstance, the fact that the participating units at the 2017 cross-country competition of Khanh Hoa’s Eighth Physical Training and Sports Festival had successfully recruited young quality players is worth to be encouraged.
 
An Nhien
Translated by H.N