Nghe An 'thirsty' for high-performance athletes

(Baonghean) - Nghe An is building a Project for High Performance Sports Development with the goal of being in the top 10 provinces, cities and sectors with the strongest sports movement in the country by 2020. However, up to this point, the selection and retention of professional athletes is still facing many difficulties.

Many departments lack quotas

Wrestling is one of the sports that is quite favorable in selecting athletes because this is a competition that is regularly held at traditional festivals such as: King Mai Temple Festival, Duc Hoang Temple Festival...

Wrestling team's practice session at the Provincial Sports Training Center. Photo: My Ha

Last year, the wrestling team met its target of 19/19 athletes and was the team with the largest number of athletes. However, in 2017, two potential and successful athletes, Nguyen Sy Dat and Nguyen Sy Thanh, resigned with the reason of changing their major and going to work abroad.

As a head coach, although he feels sorry for his students, Doan Xuan Luyen has no way to convince them to stay because he knows the hardship and thanklessness of the profession. Because being a professional athlete requires hard work, passion and dedication. However, the results depend a lot on luck.

This is also a profession with a very short lifespan and there are not many opportunities to stick with it for a long time. Coach Doan Xuan Luyen, who has won Gold Medals at the National Sports Festival for 12 consecutive years, also feels lucky because among the athletes of his generation, he is the only athlete who is kept at the center to do coaching work.

Athlete Nguyen Dinh Thao, a member of the province's wrestling team, was discovered at the Cuong Temple Wrestling Festival in 2009. After nearly 8 years with the team and winning many medals at domestic tournaments, Thao's monthly food and allowances are currently among the highest in the team, at about 10 million VND/month. With a stressful training schedule and great pressure to achieve results, Thao said: "Passion is the main thing, and salary and bonuses are not worth much."

Currently, the Provincial Sports Training Center has 19 sports with a target of 315 athletes. However, in the past two years, the center has not yet met its target and the number of athletes regularly training only fluctuates between 242 and 277 people. Among these, many sports are quite short of athletes such as Wushu with 13/18 athletes, athletics with 29/35 athletes, and shuttlecock with 11/15 athletes. In particular, the two sports Kickboxing and Vovinam have not yet recruited athletes.

While new athletes have not been recruited, the number of athletes who have asked to quit or transfer units is also quite large for many different reasons. Athlete Ngo Minh Thom, who has spent many years training in the Karatedo team and graduated from the Physical Education Department at Vinh University, once dreamed of continuing to work as a coach, but due to conditions not allowing it, he decided to quit training and accept a part-time job at a coffee shop.

Thom said: Athletes have a very short lifespan and the older they get, the less chance they have to win. Therefore, before being eliminated, athletes must quickly find another direction for themselves to stabilize their lives.

There needs to be incentive policies.

The situation of not recruiting enough professional athletes has been going on for many years in Nghe An. Mr. Nguyen Van Hue - Head coach of the Wushu team, Deputy Director of the Provincial Sports Training Center, said: Although in recent years, the province has increased training support money and allowances for athletes to quite high levels, but up to now, selecting athletes for the teams is still very difficult.

The main reason is that when entering the sports profession, athletes have to practice hard, have to sacrifice a lot, but the opportunity to become famous, successful and the opportunity to stick with the profession for a long time is not high. Besides, the age for selection to join the team is often very young (from 9 to 10 years old), so many parents are worried and afraid. Most parents want their children to study culture, to be taken care of by their parents at home, not to live concentratedly in the center.

Phu Dong Sports Festival is an important tournament to select athletes. Photo: My Ha

In fact, the selection of athletes also shows shortcomings. For example, one of the important "channels" to select athletes is through sports tournaments, through HKPĐ and through youth tournaments organized by the province.

But currently, in Nghe An, only 2/19 sports have organized youth tournaments to compete annually (swimming and karate). This also makes the selection of input quality not high and most of the selection is based on initial qualities such as "speed, strength, endurance and dexterity" rather than necessarily the athlete has strengths and experience in the sport to be trained.

Another recruitment channel is through amateur training classes at the grassroots level. In our province, classes were only opened from 2002 to 2012. Most recently, after many years of interruption, new classes have begun to be opened again in localities. However, with a support level of 3,000 VND for water/athlete/training session, attracting people to practice is not easy.

In recent years, another difficulty for the province's training work is the competition from strong teams from sectors such as the army, police and large sports centers. Through research, many athletes who are training at the center have asked to leave to join units with more economic potential and training conditions.

Therefore, in addition to the policy of attracting and motivating athletes, it is necessary to continue investing in facilities; equipping training and competition equipment and building a team of qualified and professional coaches to meet the requirements of advanced training and coaching. At the same time, it is necessary to determine the training areas for athletes in sports to invest in opening amateur talent classes, and move towards organizing training for additional athletes in concentrated routes in the province.

My Ha