What opportunities for Vietnamese gymnastics at the Olympics?

Vietnamese gymnastics has been participating in the Olympics since 2008 in Beijing, with the sole representative Do Thi Ngan Thuong. Since then, Vietnam has always had two places in this competition at the Olympics, but no one has qualified for the competition. The best achievement belonged to Phan Thi Ha Thanh at the 2012 Olympics with 12th place in the qualifying round of the anti-jump event, while the top eight only entered the final.

Not to mention the ambition of medals, reaching the final at the Olympics has been considered a success for Phuong Thanh and Thanh Tung – two representatives of Vietnam in the Tokyo Olympics. “If both athletes perform well in the qualifying round, they both have a chance to reach the final,” coach Truong Minh Sang said. VnExpress. “But, it has to be done well, because their opponents are all world-class athletes.”

Thanh Tung and Phuong Thanh both participate in the all-round event, but will compete mainly in single subjects. Thanh Tung won the first place thanks to his entry to the 2019 world finals in Stuttgart, Germany. He finished fifth in qualifying with 14,633 points. In the final, Thanh Tung’s achievement was only 14,533 and ranked sixth overall. He won the World Cup in Doha, Qatar in 2017 with 14,733 points.

At the 2016 Olympic jump, the athlete who won the last place in the final was Tomas Gonzalez with a score of 15,149. Thanh Tung must improve his performance further if he wants to enter the final of the Tokyo Olympics.

The anti-jump consists of two jumps, taking the average score of the two rounds as the ranking result. In each turn, the athletes will register the difficulty level of the jump move, called D score. The jury will score the technique of performing that move on a scale of 10, called E score. The number of points for each turn is the total. of D and E, minus any errors made, if any.

Thanh Tung’s D score in two jumps at the 2019 world tournament is 5.2 and 5.6, respectively. All athletes who have reached the finals of the 2016 Olympics have at least one jump with difficulty 6.0.

The opportunity for Phuong Thanh to enter the final of the double bar at the Tokyo Olympics is no less than Thanh Tung. Phuong Thanh won the Olympics on April 22, according to the continent. According to the double bar performance in the last eight World Cups, Phuong Thanh ranked fifth. He won the bronze medal of the World Cup in Melbourne, Australia in February 2020, with 14,933 points.

At the 2016 Olympics double bar, the last place finalist was Andrei Muntean with 15,466 points.

The double crossbar only takes place once, also divided by points D and E. Phuong Thanh often takes the D test from 6.2 to 6.4 in the World Cup. And Muntean performed the test with a difficulty of 6.6 in the final of the Rio Olympics.

Thanh Tung and Phuong Thanh both need to raise the difficulty of the exams and perform the right techniques to get high scores. “The goal of Vietnamese gymnastics is to reach the final,” added coach Minh Sang.

Gymnastics began qualifying for the men’s events on July 24 – the day after the opening ceremony. The final jump against the bar took place on August 2, and the double bar final a day later.

Xuan Binh