Nguyen Thi Ngoan won bronze medal at Karate1 Premier League

The young female martial artist from the Army delegation brought home the only medal for the Vietnamese karate team at the tournament held in Dubai, UAE.

Defeating Türkiye's Yakan Tuba 4-2, Nguyen Thi Ngoan won the bronze medal in the women's 61kg category. This is the only medal of the Vietnamese karate team in this tournament.

Karate1 Premier League is part of the professional competition system of the World Karate Federation and is used for the 2020 Olympic qualifying round. This year's tournament took place in Dubai (UAE) from March 31 to April 3, 2017, and is considered a miniature world tournament with 892 martial artists from 42 countries and territories competing.

Nguyen Thi Ngoan (red belt) is the most promising name in Vietnamese female karate after "Kata Queen" Hoang Ngan retired. Photo: Nguyen Phuong.

Nguyen Thi Ngoan showed good form when she successively defeated Moochani Fakhrisadat of Iran, Willian NatalieKarina of England with the same score of 2-0 to reach the quarter-finals. Having many difficulties with Kornfred Noemie of Switzerland, she also booked her ticket to the semi-finals with a 2-1 victory.

In the semi-finals, despite a 0-0 draw with Suchankova (Slovakia), Nguyen Thi Ngoan lost the chess advantage (referee's decision) and thus lost the ticket to the final.

Nguyen Thi Ngoan is the golden hope of Vietnamese karate at the upcoming 28th SEA Games. She is one of the best young martial artists of Vietnamese karate at present, having won a gold medal in the under-61 kg category for women of the U21 age group at the 2016 Asian Youth Championship. This athlete of the Army team won a gold medal at the 2016 Southeast Asian Championship and ranked fourth at the 2016 World Championship.

Meanwhile, the remaining athletes did not compete successfully. Tran Thi Khanh Vi, in the -50kg category, lost to the Serbian athlete after a 3-3 draw in the final match for a ticket to the bronze medal match, finishing seventh overall.

The kata team lost 0-5 in the bronze medal match against Türkiye, finishing fifth.

According to VNE