PANO – The Whole-Army Sports Festival 2011, launched by the Ministry of National Defence, ended at the Mieu Mon Rifle Range yesterday.

Present at the closing ceremony were General Phung Quang Thanh, Defence Minister, Lieutenant-General Do Ba Ty, Chief-of-the-General Staff and Deputy-Defence Minister, Lieutenant-General Nguyen Quoc Khanh, Deputy Chief-of-the-General Staff cum Head of the event’s Organising Board and Lieutenant-General Nguyen Tuan Dung, Vice-Chairman of the General Politics Department.

During the 10 days of the competition, many records were broken in categories of the strong soldiers, advanced K54 shooting lesson 1, combined military sports for officers and soldiers, huddle race and others by outstanding athletes from the Tank-Armoured Arm, Military Zones 3 and 7 and so on.

Accordingly, the Military Zone 3 ranked first out of 50 participation units, followed by the Military Zone 5 and Army Corps 4.

Addressing the ceremony, General Phung Quang Thanh highly valued the efforts of athletes, especially the outstanding with new records, the referees and the Organising Board to overcome difficulties to fulfill the event’s set targets.

He also affirmed that the event was a whole army festival to evaluate the units’ sport training quality and choose the most outstanding athletes of the army teams for next tournaments.

Translated by Van Hieu