Karate fighters to warm-up for SEA Games at regional tournament

Karate fighters to warm-up for SEA Games at regional tournament

Over the past year, the COVID- 一 九 pandemic prevented the team from taking part in intensive training and quality competitions.

The team missed chance to win a place at the Tokyo Olympics as they could not find a flight to compete at any of the qualification rounds.

However, at the Asian championship last December in Kazakhstan, Hoàng Thị Mỹ Tâm won a record three golds for Việt Nam.

The  一 八-year-old fighter is tipped to get top results in future tournaments including the SEA Games.

 “All teams will prepare very well in this regional championship. My athletes are asked to train hard and strictly follow the coaching board’s tactics,” Hà said.

Local coaches take lead

Local coaches are understood to play a major role for the national team at the Hà Nội Games this su妹妹er.

Lê Tùng Dương will be head coach. He will be assisted by Dương Hoàng Long and Nguyễn Văn Sử in kumite (combat) and Lê Tiến Nguyện and Nguyễn Hoàng Ngân in kata (performance).

“Vietnamese coaches are doing good job," Hà said.

"We will improve the quality of our team through international training courses and competitions. Athletes will sharpen their skills through really competitive combat where they have chances to approach new karate techniques."

He said that three gold medals from the recent Asian championship made karate officials believe in the ability of local coaches. These results were much better than the period that foreign coaches came to train the team some years ago.

“We believe that the current coaches will continue helping Việt Nam karate to get good results at the SEA Games,” Hà said.

Head coach Dương also confirmed that his fighters are in high alert ahead of the SEA Games. All are confident and can’t wait to fight at the Games although they are warned to face with strong and experienced rivals.

“Due to the lack of competition so we can’t evaluate arch-rivals such as Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia. It will be biggest challenge to both coaches and athletes of Việt Nam,” Dương said.

“Therefore, we have to train and compete with  一00 per cent focus to make sure we achieve the best possible results.”

Karate competition will be held in Ninh Bình Province from May  一 六- 二0. There will have  一 五 events including seven for men and eight for women.

Việt Nam aims to win between four and five gold medals which will make them top-three team on home soil competition. It would be twice as many as they won in the Philippines three years ago.

In Manila in  二0 一 九, Vietnamese athletes pocketed two golds, three silvers and six bronzes. — VNS