'The beauty' of Nghe An martial arts village and the desire to spread passion

10 years undefeated in the ring

Born in 1990, growing up in a poor farming family in Hung Linh commune (Hung Nguyen), with good physical strength, from a young age, Ngu Thi Thuyet was very passionate about sports. During her final years of primary school and early secondary school, Ngu Thi Thuyet often participated in Phu Dong Sports Festival at school and provincial levels in athletics and football.

During her 6th and 7th grade years, Thuyet was the best female soccer player in her school's soccer team and had intended to go to Hanoi to audition for the Hanoi Club's female soccer team. However, at that time, Thuyet was only 13 years old, and her family did not want their daughter to leave home so early, so she had to put aside her passion for soccer.

However, that was the chance for Ngu Thi Thuyet to come to martial arts. In early 2005, on the way home from school, she saw an announcement in Hung Long commune about opening a traditional martial arts class. With her love for new sports, the 14-year-old girl immediately signed up. The class had just opened for 2 weeks,Coach Bui Duy Vinhof the Provincial Sports Training and Coaching Center (now the Provincial Sports Training and Competition Center), during an athlete selection trip, visited the class and realized that Ngu Thi Thuyet had the qualities of a potential athlete, so he convinced Thuyet's family to send Thuyet to the Center for training.

With her innate talent, after only 2 months of training in the province, Ngu Thi Thuyet was selected to join the Nghe An team to participate in the National Traditional Martial Arts Championship. Right in this first tournament, the 14-year-old girl won a Bronze Medal. “For me, this Bronze Medal is more than a Gold Medal and after receiving the medal, I always wear it around my neck while eating and sleeping and tell myself “today I got a Bronze Medal, in the coming days I must try and make an effort every day to get a Gold Medal”, Ngu Thi Thuyet confided.

In 2006, Ngu Thi Thuyet was trained in Boxing and added to the Nghe An team to participate in the 5th National Sports Congress. Although she was one of the youngest athletes representing Nghe An sports to participate in the congress, she also contributed 1 Bronze Medal. Notably, through this tournament, the National team coaches recognized Thuyet's great potential and called her up to the National team to participate in the Asian Youth Boxing Championship.

Since 2008, Ngu Thi Thuyet has continuously achieved success with dozens of medals of all kinds. In particular, since being introduced to Kickboxing, in 2010, Thuyet won the Gold Medal at the National Kickboxing Championship in the 57kg category. And in the next 10 years (2008 - 2018), this female boxer was undefeated in the 50kg category in all 3 traditional martial arts and 60kg boxing, Kickboxing in national tournaments. In domestic tournaments, she won 9 Gold Medals at National Championships, 2 championship belts at the Boxing and Traditional Martial Arts Championships for outstanding national athletes competing for the Let's Viet championship belt.

Although she competed excellently in domestic tournaments, Ngu Thi Thuyet was not lucky enough to compete in regional, continental and world tournaments due to some injuries during the National team training. The best achievement that Thuyet achieved in the team was the Silver Medal at the 2016 Asian Beach Games and reaching the Bronze Medal match at the 2007 Asian Youth Boxing Championship. However, Ngu Thi Thuyet is still considered one of the most respected female boxers in the Vietnamese martial arts community in the first 20 years of the 21st century.

In April 2022, right before ending her high-performance competition career, Ngu Thi Thuyet still won a Gold Medal in the under 60kg weight category at the Ba Ria - Vung Tau Provincial Open Kickboxing Tournament.

The desire to "pass on the fire"

According to Ngu Thi Thuyet, to become a martial arts athlete, compared to men, women have to strive and work hard a lot.

In addition to physical and psychological disadvantages, women also have to overcome social prejudices with rumors that "girls who learn martial arts" will be like this or that. In the early days, training was very hard with many strength training exercises with weights, learning skills to avoid and attack opponents... after each training session, muscle pain and sprains after strong collisions made me think I had to give up. But passion added to my determination, along with the encouragement and help of teacher Bui Duy Vinh and seniors, I persevered in training, learning more techniques and tactics in competition....

Female martial artist Ngu Thi Thuyet

This female martial artist also shared that, right at the first tournament at the age of 14, she thought about giving up martial arts. “At that time, my technique was still weak, and I was also timid and fearful, so on the first day of the tournament, I was stiff and after only a few minutes, I received a punch to the face from my opponent, causing a nosebleed. During the break between rounds, seeing me tense and showing signs of giving up, teacher Vinh said to me, “Do you want to be a martial artist? If you want, believe in your own strength and try harder.” Because of what the teacher said, I tried to stand up and compete and won that match. After that, I promised myself to practice to compete better, because if I didn’t try and was sent back, I would become a burden to my parents in the countryside…”, Ngu Thi Thuyet confided.

According to Ngu Thi Thuyet, when entering the professional competition path, it is necessary to be disciplined with yourself to achieve your desired goals. Winning a championship or a high ranking is difficult, but maintaining it is even more difficult, forcing me to maintain my spirit and try harder in training.

After finishing her high-performance competition, Ngu Thi Thuyet became a coach of Traditional Martial Arts - Boxing - Kickboxing (Provincial Sports Training and Competition Center). With the experience accumulated through 17 years of professional competition, along with the knowledge learned from her predecessors, Coach Ngu Thi Thuyet has devotedly taught and imparted to her athletes.

"I feel that my advantage when teaching is that I know how to apply and harmoniously combine strength and firmness with softness and gentleness, femininity to be close to and encourage athletes to try harder in training to achieve good results in tournaments," the female martial arts coach shared.

At the end of June, the Nghe An Kickboxing team, with Ngu Thi Thuyet as head coach, competed in the 2023 Central Highlands Kickboxing Championship held in Binh Dinh province. At this tournament, Nghe An athletes won 8 medals, including 6 Gold Medals, 1 Silver Medal and 1 Bronze Medal. This is considered the biggest mark of Ngu Thi Thuyet after more than 1 year as a coach.

“Although the facilities, training and living conditions of martial arts athletes in Nghe An are still difficult, I still want to use all my experience to inspire passion in young athletes, contributing to helping Nghe An martial arts flourish in upcoming tournaments,” Ngu Thi Thuyet confided.