The National Eighth Physical Training and Sports Festival is slated for late November 2018 in Hanoi. Khanh Hoa's sports delegation aims to rank in top 20, which seems to be a reachable goal.
The National Eighth Physical Training and Sports Festival is slated for late November 2018 in Hanoi. Khanh Hoa’s sports delegation aims to rank in top 20, which seems to be a reachable goal.
As planned, Khanh Hoa will send players to compete in 13 events out of 36 ones. The province’s sports teams will strive to achieve ten gold medals and place 20th out of 65 participating units, which means four gold medals more and five spots higher than the result of the 2014 National Eighth Physical Training and Sports Festival. There have been some opinions that a higher goal should be set because the seventh and eighth festivals are four years apart. Therefore, the players have enough time to prepare well for the eighth festival.
However, in recent years, many sports which used to be the strength of Khanh Hoa’s sports like athletics, table-tennis, and tennis have lost their positions in the domestic tournaments. At present, only some sports of Khanh Hoa remain their competitiveness in the national tournaments. At the National Seventh Physical Training and Sports Festival, Khanh Hoa also set goal to win 11 gold medals and finish in top 20. The strong sports of Khanh Hoa at that time (athletics, karate, taekwondo, and table-tennis) were expected to bring home golds. However, these sports failed to fulfill the goal. The province’s athletics team only got bronze medal. On the other hand, the gold winners were the athletes of sports which had been less invested like traditional martial art, dance sport, and beach volleyball. These athletes won six gold medals for Khanh Hoa’s delegation, helping the province to place 26th.
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Khanh Hoa’s athletics is now facing many difficulties, for example lack of athletes, quality training facilities, and movement tournaments. Besides, in such a circumstance, some athletes who had gained some good achievements at national level transferred to other localities when being given better offers. In table-tennis, Doan Kien Quoc, who has been athlete and present coach of provincial team, has still been the only athlete of Khanh Hoa competitive for gold medals at the domestic tournaments.
Although many sports have lost its positions, some other sports of Khanh Hoa have got positive results in recent years. Specifically, in 2017, Khanh Hoa’s indoor volleyball, beach volleyball, muay Thai, traditional martial art, and gymnastic teams won many gold medals at the national tournaments. These achievements are also the driving force and bring hope for Khanh Hoa’s sports at the upcoming National Eighth Physical Training and Sports Festival.
An Nhien
Translated by H.N
