>>> Archers struck two additional Olympic berths for Vietnam sports
In particular, Nguyet experienced a memorable 2019 as she was one of the only two Vietnamese archers to book an official place in the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, whilst grabbing a gold medal at the 30th Southeast Asian (SEA) Games in the Philippines. For this girl, it was just the beginning of a long journey ahead with much greater goals.
The right decision
Nguyet got into archery in a quite interesting fashion. Initially, she started with the pursuit of a professional sport career as a basketball player because of her good height and agility. During the seven months of training and playing for the Hanoi youth basketball team, Nguyet somewhat proved her quality. However, after a period of hard work, it was her basketball trainers who realised that she possessed some suitable features for archery. They believed that this girl would be much more successful by sticking to archery instead of basketball. In early 2017, Nguyet officially decided to switch to familiarise herself with the new sport. The more she practised archery, the greater her feeling of passion for the sport became. The shooting practice always made Nguyet feel excited, which has become the motivation for her to determinedly conquer the peaks of performance in this Olympic sport.
“Switching from practising such a vibrant and dynamic sport as basketball into a static sport like archery has brought me really interesting experiences,” Nguyet told the media.
As expected by her basketball trainers, Nguyet quickly adapted to archery and showed particularly rapid progress when focusing on the recurve (one string) event. This discipline requires high technical qualities and good fitness. Together with her inherent qualities, the encouragement and guidance from teammates and the coaching staff have helped Nguyet to improve day after day.
Archery is a sport with peculiar characteristics, requiring a long period of hard work to become a qualified athlete. From training to competing, archers must withstand the hot climatic conditions of the summer and the cold weather of the winter to draw the bows with a force of up to nearly 20kg per shot. Even so, the Hung Yen-born young girl still shows great interest and excitement.
“Archery has forged my perseverance and calmness to know how to face difficulties and challenges in life. I must remain calm in every breath to persevere until the last arrow,” Nguyet shared.
Talent and adequate investment make success
Not long after her decision to move on to archery, Nguyet was called up to the national team. Just over a year later, her archery career witnessed spectacular progress in the international playground.
In particular, the last two months of 2019 marked a series of impressive achievements attained by the 19-year-old girl. At the Asian Archery Championships in Thailand, Nguyet brilliantly clinched the bronze medal in the women’s recurve event, thus becoming one of the three athletes to secure a direct ticket to the Tokyo 2020. Such an exceptional result then became a strong motivation driving Nguyet to continue harvesting success with a SEA Games gold medal on her debut at the region’s largest sporting event.
Currently playing for Hanoi’s archery team, Nguyet is a rare case in Vietnamese sport concerning the training time to conquer an Olympic berth. Some athletes need a few years, some others must spend dozens of years, but it only took Nguyet about two years to progress from a beginner in the sport to making it through to the Olympic arena. The result was a surprise for not only experts but also to Nguyet herself, as she once said that even she had not expected to achieve such rapid success. This will certainly be a great encouragement for Nguyet inspiring her towards valuable medals in future international tournaments.
The success of Do Thi Anh Nguyet can be attributed to the adequate care and investment from the Hanoi Department of Culture and Sports. The days of hard work with the coaching staff and experts, and the training courses at the leading archery training centre together with the Republic of Korea team helped Nguyet to sharpen her skills and accumulate a lot of experience. In preparation for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic campaign, the sport sector and the Vietnam Archery Federation have designed an appropriate training plan and investment strategy for Nguyet so that she will have the best training conditions towards the goal of bringing home the prestigious Olympic medal.
