Athletics coach Nguyen Thanh Hai and the concerns of a ferryman

Now, behind the scenes, he is diligently nurturing young talents to reap medals forprovincial sports.

Coach Nguyen Thanh Hai (far left) was an athlete who won the Asian Silver Medal. Photo: PV

The Asian Silver Medal of a Lifetime

I met Nguyen Thanh Hai on a hot summer afternoon in Nghe An, when he was instructing his students on short-distance running exercises. His skin was dark and his body was quite muscular, so his brothers and friends often jokingly called him Hai “bulky”.

The name Hai "bulky" is quite famous in the village.Athleticshome country. He has won many gold medals in athletics in the country and especially theMedalSilver medal in the 2000 Asian Games in the 200m race. The emotions of that day are still vivid in my memory: “Athletics is one of the main events in the Olympics. Therefore, their countries invested heavily in this event. I won the Silver Medal in the 2000 Asian Games, the first Silver Medal in athletics for Vietnamese sports at that time.” - Coach Nguyen Thanh Hai recalled.

In the early 90s of the last century, while studying at Nam Cuong Secondary School (Nam Dan district), Nguyen Thanh Hai was one of the students sent to compete in the provincial Phu Dong Sports Festival. With his innate qualities, he always came first in the short-distance race. Hai was quickly selected to join the provincial Sports Training and Coaching Center. During his training at the center, he always left a strong impression in the eyes of the coaches. With long strides, strong and fast jumping power, he was selected by the coach for the short-distance race.

Having the talent, but to reach success, Nguyen Thanh Hai had to go through an extremely difficult training process. He recalled: “In the exercise to improve jumping ability, I had to carry a weight weighing up to 160 kg. Unfortunately, I injured my back, the pain made me cry, it took me several months to practice again”. But then the days of hard training brought Nguyen Thanh Hai initial success. He won Gold Medals in all the National Youth Athletics Championships in those years.

Impressed by an athlete with outstanding qualities, Nguyen Thanh Hai was called to the national team to participate in the Asian Athletics Championship. The days of training with the team were the most intense training days in the athlete's life of the "cumbersome" Hai. Every day, the athletes had to practice 3 shifts, starting from 5am until 5pm. The training volume was heavy, almost exhausting the athletes. "There was a training session, the training plan given by the coach was that each athlete had to run 5 times, each time a distance of 300m, each lap could not exceed 38 seconds. After that training session, almost every athlete was dizzy, unable to eat dinner at night," Hai recalled.

Such a hard training process sometimes made the perseverance of this athlete born in 1979 fade away. There was even a time when he wanted to stop training, but then with the encouragement of Mr. Vu Ngoc Loi - the teacher who had guided him since the first days of training at the Provincial Sports Training and Coaching Center, he had the motivation to overcome.

After a period of intense training, Nguyen Thanh Hai and the Vietnamese athletics team participated in the Asian Athletics Championships. This is the highest athletics tournament in the continent. In the 200m sprint event, there were 34 participating teams, including many athletes from very strong countries such as China, Arabia, Korea, Japan... Entering the tournament, Nguyen Thanh Hai was a bit overwhelmed, but he quickly regained his composure and focused all his determination and strength to complete the competition. The final result was beyond expectations, with 21.28s (breaking Vietnam's record in the 200m event), Nguyen Thanh Hai was named the winner of the Silver Medal in Asian Athletics in 2000.

To achieve that achievement, Nguyen Thanh Hai had to go through an extremely arduous training process. Photo: PV

The ferryman's worries

Ending his coaching career in 2008, Nguyen Thanh Hai was retained as a coach at the Nghe An Sports Training and Coaching Center.

Witnessing a training session in scorching hot weather, one can see the hardships of a sports coach. During two training sessions a day, Coach Thanh Hai always provides a suitable training plan for each athlete, so that they can develop their strengths to the fullest. There are sessions when even though the training period has ended, he still stays behind to train the athletes.

Recently, in 2020, at the national youth athletics tournament, Mr. Nguyen Thanh Hai and his students won 3 gold medals and 2 silver medals. Also in this year, To Thi Nga - the student he had spent a lot of effort training, won the national athletics bronze medal. These are still quite modest achievements, but with the current strength of Nghe An athletics, it is also an encouraging result for the efforts of teachers and students.

Now that he has become an athletics coach, he still struggles to bring high achievements to his province's sports. Photo: PV

In recent years, the achievements of Nghe An athletics have not been high, which is also a concern of coach Nguyen Thanh Hai. According to this coach, there are many reasons, but one of them is the limited source of athletes. In recent years, Nghe An has not been able to find outstanding talented students. Coach Hai shared: “Every year, we have many channels to select athletes such as the provincial HKPĐ tournament, gifted classes in the districts. In particular, every year to find sources, we also go to schools in the mountains to find students who are truly talented. However, there are days when we go for 3 days in a row and still cannot recruit a single student.”

Finding talented athletes is difficult, but convincing them to join athletics is even more difficult. Coach Thanh Hai shared: “We have found some qualified athletes to train at the center, but when we persuaded them to join the athletics class, many refused, with the reason being that training in this sport is too harsh, draining their energy. Finding a source of athletes is difficult, but keeping them is even more difficult. Because many students, after training at the center, still quit halfway to find less strenuous jobs with better income.”