THE LAST COMPETITION DAY OF TAEKWONDO
VAN HUNG AND HUYEN DIEU HAVE MADE A BRIGHT SPOT IN HISTORY 

The evening of December is an unforgettable moment of Taekwondo Viet Nam when Nguyen Van Hung and Huyen Dieu marked bright scarlet spot in the history of VietNam Taekwondo: they are both SEA Games Champions in 3 consecutive times at the age of 23. Entering the final match at the category 47kg encountering Thi Ri Tint Lwin (Myanmar), Huyen Dieu almost blew up Phu Tho Competition Hall when the time for first bout hadnot finished yet, she scored 5 points consecutively from the attacks by both legs. Huyen Dieu initiatively got close to the opponent to attack, 3 horizontal kicks and one cracking kick down to the head forced Lwin to be in helpless condition. Getting ardent in triumph, Huyen Dieu continued to show her strength by her strong-point-forte right –legged kicks in the last 2bouts and won the match with persuasive score 9-1. Weeping in the joy of victory, Huyen Dieu said, “ I wish to thank all the spectators for very enthusiastic support which gives me more strength to gain victory.” 

With Nguyen Van Hung, Gaining victory at 84kg category seemed even more easily. When the first bout passed just more than half of the regulated time, The coach of Dindo Simpao (Philippines) had to throw a white towel (the clock paused at 1 minute 2 seconds). After days of hard training for the moment of being crowned, and right at that moment, Van Hung ran to share the joy with his mother who was standing outside nervously following up her son’s moves on the arena. 

The joy should have been completed for all Vietnamese fans if there were not inaccurate judgments of the referees controlling the final match of 58kg category. Nguyen Quoc Huan was deprived of the gold medal in his homeland right the first time participating SEA Games. Meeting with a very clever opponent from Malaysia Lim Yit Min, Quoc Huan performed his wonderful technique while having to go up the downstream in all 3 bouts. Tamed with 2 legs is Huan’s advantage, all his counter-attack hit the targets - to the armour, face, and head of his opponent. In bout 2, when Lim Yit Min led with 4-3, Huan threw an accurate kick to his opponent ‘s face, but the referee only gave Huan 1 point (as stated in the regulations, the kick hitting face or head of the opponent will get 2 points). The whole Phu Tho got hot when the main referees was asked to have time out for 3 times. Nevertheless, there would be no changes if the match was controlled by the partiality like that, thus Quoc Huan was deprived from gold medal in a close shave (his opponent won 7-6 and inspite of being 1 points minus). In the meantime, Nguyen Thi Hoai Thu (59kg)lost at the score 2-4 in favor of Chonnapas Premwaew from Thailand right in the preliminary.

Ending the competition, Viet Nam takes the first place in final classification with 5 gold medals, 4 silver medals, 4 bronze medals. Due to not having as many silver medals, Philippines is placed the second (5,3,6), Thailand is in the third place (3,1,7) and Indonesia is the fourth (2,1,6)

Thanh Lam