The event was chaired by Lieutenant General Nguyen Van Nghia, Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Vietnam People’s Army.
Reports delivered at the event reviewed that last year, military athletes participated in 62 international sporting competitions, bringing home a total of 139 medals, including 75 golds, 31 silvers, and 33 bronze ones.
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The General Staff's leader and military coaches and athletes in a joint photo |
Attentively, the Vietnam People’s Army sent 46 athletes to compete in different events at the 2019 SEA Games, bagging 29 medals of different kinds for the Vietnamese team. Military swimmer Anh Vien was honored as the best athlete at the games for winning six gold and two silver medals and breaking a record.
At the 2019 Army Games in Wuhan, China which saw the participation of athletes from 109 countries, the Vietnamese military team successfully fulfilled the set target after bagging a silver medal and a bronze medal.
Also in 2019, Vietnam ranked the third among ten participating countries in the 29th ASEAN Army Rifle Meet (AARM-29) in Indonesia. At the event, the Vietnamese military team brought home a trophy while its members bagged 28 medals of different kinds.
In April 2019, Vietnamese military marksmen pocketed a gold medal and a silver one in the Australian Army Skill at Arms Meet (AASAM) 2019, ranking the fifth among 19 participating countries.
Praising achievements recorded by military coaches and athletes in 2019 in the international arena, General Nghia affirmed that these results brought pride to the military and the nation. He asked coaches to continue to raise their professionalism and foreign language skills and athletes to promote training, so as to bring sports in Vietnam to new heights.
He believed that coaches and athletes in the military will record more achievements at national and international sporting events in 2020 to contribute to raising the sport sector of the military in particular and the nation in general.
Regarding tasks in 2020 and the years to come, Deputy Director of the General Department of Sports and Physical Training Tran Duc Phan hoped that the Ministry of National Defense will further train its personnel to compete in important future international sporting events, including the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, SEA Games 31, and ASIAD 2022.
At the ceremony, organizers handed over the Defense Ministry’s and General Staff’s certificates of merit to four groups and 42 individuals and seven groups and 37 individuals with excellent performance at international competitions last year, respectively.
Translated by Tran Hoai