Vietnamese Wushu at Asiad 20: Four Medals, One Final Berth and an Unchanged Order

On the screen set in a corner of my office in Nha Trang, Dinh Van Tam held his guard after the bell closed the men's 56kg semifinal. He did not shout. He did not raise his arms. He stood still for about three seconds, chest heaving, then turned to salute Fereddy Sinaga of Indonesia before walking back to his corner. I wrote that moment into my squared notebook, beside the line "into the final, at least silver guaranteed". On four other mats that same afternoon, three of his teammates left the floor with their heads bowed. People remember the goals; I remember the sigh behind the net.

That is the portrait of a single competition day for Vietnamese wushu at Asiad 20: one unbroken joy and three quiet sorrows, adding up to four bronze medals and one place in a final. The number sounds fine. But if we stop at the number, we miss the most interesting part of the story — the part that lives in the bracket structure, in the medal-award rule, and in the wall named China.

Two branches of wushu, two measures that cannot be mixed

One thing must be said plainly, because many reports have collapsed it into one: wushu at continental multi-sport Games exists in two entirely different branches, and the two cannot be judged by the same yardstick.

The first is sanshou, also called sanda — a full-contact discipline permitting punches, kicks, and above all standing throws and sweeps. Sanda has no ground fighting and no submission grappling; scoring counts legal strikes, knockdowns, and fouls. It is a combat sport whose rules differ sharply from professional kickboxing under K-1 or Glory rules, where throws score nothing. A sanda result therefore cannot be used to infer kickboxing ability, and vice versa. A good sanda fighter is not necessarily a good kickboxer, because the two demand very different skills and rhythms.

The second is taolu — the performance branch, contested through forms, bare-hand routines and weapons. Taolu has no opponent and no direct win or loss; panels of judges score it on two axes: degree of difficulty and quality of execution. A taolu medal is thus the product of a scoring margin, not of a bout. Nobody "beats" anybody in taolu. Someone simply scores higher.

This distinction matters because the day in question contains both branches. Three of the four bronze medals came from sanda. The remaining one — in sword and spear — belongs to taolu and was won by Duong Thuy Vi. In the reporting, they are placed side by side as equal numbers. Analytically, they sit in two different worlds.

On the sanda side, four Vietnamese fighters reached the semifinals across different weight classes. Dinh Van Tam, men's 56kg, was the only one to pass the semifinal and enter the final scheduled for September 24. The other three — Nguyen Thi Thu Thuy in women's 60kg, Hua Van Doan in men's 60kg, and Nguyen Khac Kien in men's 65kg — all stopped at the semifinal and took bronze.

The striking detail lies in the identity of those who beat them. Thu Thuy lost to Zhang Xiaoyu. Van Doan lost to Tang Sishuo. Both are Chinese fighters. Khac Kien lost to Shoja Panahigelehkolaei, a representative of Iran. Those three defeats are not scattered; they point in the same direction.

The order of continental sanda

Placed side by side, those three defeats draw a very clear order in continental sanda.

China is the first wall. This is nothing new. At any Games that includes wushu, every delegation knows that to reach the top of the podium it must sooner or later pass a Chinese fighter — or avoid one through a lucky draw. Wushu originated in China, but Chinese strength does not rest on historical advantage; it rests on squad depth. China can field fighters of different calibres in nearly every weight class, in both men's and women's events, and that turns the bracket into a system in which other delegations must accept that their golden chances are usually confined to a couple of weight classes, or depend on whether their half of the draw opens up.

The fact that both Thu Thuy and Van Doan lost to Chinese opponents in the semifinals is not a surprising coincidence. It is the expression of a structure. Brackets are arranged so that Chinese fighters usually hold the seeded positions, and foreign opponents — however strong — tend to meet them in the round that decides medal colour. For Vietnam, having two fighters land in a half containing China says that our wushu is strong enough to go deep in the outer rounds, but not yet strong enough to break through the top layer.

Iran is the second wall, and it carries a different shade. If China is strong across the board, Iran is strong in a very particular way: its wrestling base. Iran has a long wrestling tradition, and when it enters sanda — where throws are heavily weighted in scoring — it converts that advantage into a weapon. To understand why Iran is uncomfortable for Vietnamese fighters at 65kg, remember that sanda scores throws very heavily. One clean throw can swing an entire round. In lighter classes, where speed and dexterity are usually prioritised, raw throwing strength has less room to operate. In middle classes such as 65kg, physicality and throwing technique become decisive. That may be why Vietnam's 56kg and 60kg classes produced better results than 65kg — but this is directional reasoning, not a firm conclusion, because the report provides no data on how the bouts unfolded.

The regrettable part is that the original report tells us only the results, not how the defeats happened. There is no data on strike accuracy, no count of times taken down, no description of how each round unfolded. For a writer with a habit of meticulous note-taking like mine, that is a large gap. I can only assert that those three defeats fit the known order of continental sanda; I cannot conclude that Vietnamese fighters are weaker in any specific technical dimension.

The broader picture of Vietnam's results has a familiar trait: many fighters reach the semifinals, few reach the final. Four semifinal berths exchanged for one final place and three bronze medals. For a wushu programme moving from regional strength toward the continent, this is the profile of a sport at the threshold of good but not yet touching the leading group. It resembles a team that routinely reaches the quarterfinals but rarely the semis: enough to be proud of, not yet enough to change the hierarchy.

Dinh Van Tam is the exception. At 56kg he is the only one to pass the semifinal, and his win over Fereddy Sinaga of Indonesia shows that within the Southeast Asian group, the Vietnamese fighter is in better form. But it is worth remembering that beating a Southeast Asian opponent does not equate to overcoming the Chinese or Iranian tier. The final on September 24 will be the real test, and until his opponent is known, any prediction about medal colour is guesswork.

Across my years of watching bouts, there is a small rule I always remind myself of: a fighter who reaches a final by beating opponents from his own region has often not yet proven he can beat opponents from the tier above. That does not diminish Dinh Van Tam's win. It only places it correctly on the map.

Taolu and the story of a veteran

On the taolu side, Duong Thuy Vi's bronze in the sword and spear event carries a different meaning. The report describes her as a veteran, and that label deserves a pause.

In taolu, age does not reduce punch resistance as it does in combat disciplines, but it directly affects difficulty. Jumping, landing and twisting in the air all demand knees, ankles and balance at a threshold an older body struggles to maintain. A veteran taolu athlete often shifts direction: relying less on maximum difficulty, more on execution quality, on cleanliness of movement and consistency. Duong Thuy Vi's medal is therefore likely the product of maturity rather than a peak of athleticism. It is the durable kind of medal, earned because she is still standing on a continental floor when many peers of her generation have stopped.

And it bears repeating that taolu is judged by panels of officials. Its results depend on the margin between difficulty and execution, assessed by separate judging panels. There is no "beating an opponent" here. There is only "scoring higher". The report does not provide that scoring margin, so we know she stood on the podium but not how far she stood from the top.

Given that taolu is dominated almost absolutely by China at every Games, any medal won by another delegation deserves separate recognition. It does not come from defeating anyone, but from squeezing into a space whose leading places usually belong to the home country of this martial art. That is why I hold that Duong Thuy Vi's medal carries a different kind of value from the three sanda bronzes — the value of endurance across cycles, rather than that of a single soaring day.

A counter-intuitive angle: the "rain" and the mechanics of the rule

This is where I want to say something plainly, even if it may cool the celebratory mood.

Framing the day as "wushu bringing a rain of medals" sounds enthusiastic, but it obscures a mechanical detail of the rules. In knockout combat brackets, both fighters who lose in the semifinals receive bronze. This is the Games' medal-distribution convention, not an invention unique to wushu. The consequence is simple: merely reaching the semifinal guarantees a medal. For Vietnam, three of the day's bronze medals came from precisely this mechanism. They are real achievements, but they came from reaching the semifinals, not from winning a medal bout.

In other words, part of the "rain" is an effect of the rules. That does not diminish the fighters' effort — reaching a continental semifinal is a genuine accomplishment — but it compels us to read the number soberly. Four medals, three of them bronzes by mechanism and one a taolu bronze, plus a final berth guaranteeing at least silver. That is a good day of competition. It is not evidence of a wushu programme at the continental leading edge.

The most telling signal of the day, to me, is not the medal count but that no Vietnamese fighter in the report is described as having beaten a Chinese or Iranian opponent. The only win with a named opponent is Dinh Van Tam over Fereddy Sinaga of Indonesia. The other three bouts were defeats to China and Iran. That is the true signal of where we stand on the map of continental sanda.

I do not write this to discourage. I write it because I believe the truth about one's position is the only trustworthy starting point. A sport that wants to rise needs to know exactly where it stands, not to receive an inflated halo. China is strong, Iran is strong, and Vietnam's repeated arrival at the semifinals shows we sit in the tier just beneath them. That tier is not a low tier. It is simply not the highest.

One more thing about information quality. The original report gives no ages for the sanda fighters, no training-camp details, no injuries, no prior head-to-head records. We do not know whom Dinh Van Tam has faced before, or whether these four fighters are permanent national-team members. We know whom they beat and lost to, but not who they are over the long journey. For a writer guided by verification, that is a reminder: be careful calling a competition day a "rain", because rain can evaporate quickly, while structure endures.

Signals to track

The men's 56kg final on September 24 is the most important point to watch. If Dinh Van Tam wins gold, the Vietnamese wushu story gains a new layer of meaning — a first breach of the medal-colour ceiling. If he loses, the picture returns to its proper place: a wushu programme solid at the regional tier, knocking on the door of the continental tier.

Behind that result lies a larger question about how we invest. Wushu is not a commercial professional sport. Fighters live on state salaries, federation support and medal bonuses. That means Games results can directly affect the resources of an entire cycle. A bronze today can be the reason a training-camp slot is approved next year, or a young fighter is retained on the national team. Conversely, a fighter without a medal can quietly leave the system with no one noticing.

St. Petersburg taught me that a stumble is the fastest way to learn to walk. I still keep my habit of noting the smallest details, including ones no one else notices. Every season has its own pulse, if only you care to listen. And sometimes that pulse is not in the medal, but in the moment a fighter stands still for three seconds on the mat, not yet knowing where the next bout will take him.

The quiet star of Nha Trang never goes out.