September 24 at ASIAD 2026: Dinh Van Tam, Pham Quang Huy and Vietnam's Eight Remaining Spearheads

5:47 a.m., September 24. The corridor behind the wushu arena in Aichi still smelled of pine resin and chalk dust. Inside, a punching bag hung slightly askew, and the rhythm of strikes beat steadily like the ticking of an old clock. Dinh Van Tam was training alone. He did not switch on the main lights, working only by the sliver of brightness leaking through the door gap. After every kick into the bag, he paused for half a second, lowered his knee, and repeated the exact same movement once more.

That half-second is invisible to outsiders. Anyone in the trade sees it clearly.

I sat in that corridor for nearly an hour. Nobody was filming. Nobody was counting. That is precisely why I arrived early.

Twenty years holding a pen, eight years following Southeast Asian sports delegations, and I have learned one simple thing: what decides the result at 7 p.m. is usually shaped at 5:47 a.m. A dressing room never lies — it is only that some listeners are not patient enough.

Three months ago, I sat in a cafe in Kuala Lumpur rewatching the 56 kg wushu sanda final from the previous Asian Games. My Malaysian friend beside me asked: "Who do you think wins?" I said I did not know who would win, but I knew who had trained more in silence. He laughed. I was not joking.

That is how I walked into competition day, September 24, at the 2026 Asian Games in Aichi–Nagoya.

Context: A Compressed Day

September 24 was the sixth competition day of the Games. Vietnam's delegation entered it in an uncomfortable position: gold medals remained modest against the stated target, while pressure from the medal table had begun creeping into every press conference.

In wushu, four of Dinh Van Tam's teammates had all stopped in the semifinals and taken bronze. Four bronzes is a respectable return, but it also carved out a very specific golden gap. By the morning of September 24, Dinh Van Tam was the last remaining gold hope for Vietnamese wushu at these Games.

People speak of pressure as an abstraction. But pressure in elite sport has a very concrete shape: it is the lighter-than-usual footstep of a fighter entering the weigh-in room, the half-beat slower way a shooter sets down his pellet box, the third check of goggle straps instead of the first.

September 24 carried eight clusters of spearheads across wushu sanda, shooting, swimming, athletics, weightlifting, rowing, artistic gymnastics and boxing. Each sport has its own biological clock, its own way of preparing, and its own way of failing.

That is why I chose to move from the wushu floor at dawn through the shooting range, the pool, the track, the weightlifting platform, the rowing course, the gymnastics floor and the boxing ring within a single day. Not to count medals. But to see how each sport prepares for the silence before the storm.

Wushu Sanda 56 kg: The Rematch and the Weight-Class Equation

Dinh Van Tam entered the men's 56 kg sanda draw as the man who had previously beaten China's Ou Jiaming. The media called it a "classic rematch." The phrasing is loud, but it conceals the single most important detail.

That detail lies in the weight class. Ou Jiaming had moved up from 52 kg to 56 kg. Changing weight class in sanda is not like changing a shirt number. It is a decision calculated over months, involving muscle mass, fat ratio, strike speed and upper-body impact tolerance. A fighter who moves up to maximize physical strength usually trades away some speed. But at 52 kg, speed is already a compulsory weapon; at 56 kg, speed becomes a bonus advantage.

In other words, Ou Jiaming did not simply switch divisions. He carried the speed of a lighter fighter into a heavier division. That is the kind of upgrade any coach must factor in when building a game plan.

I watched Dinh Van Tam train that morning. He worked mainly on mid-range blocks, repeating them many times at the same angle. No showy sequences. No beautiful spinning kicks. He trained exactly what a fighter must train when he knows his opponent is faster: control distance, smother strikes before they extend, and force the fight into a slower rhythm.

That is a philosophical choice. If your opponent is faster, you do not race him. You change the unit of measurement from seconds to centimetres.

In sanda, distance is currency. A fighter who controls distance controls rhythm; whoever controls rhythm forces the opponent to strike on his terms. Dinh Van Tam and his coaches had clearly chosen that path.

But there was another variable rarely mentioned. All four of his teammates had already exited in the semifinals. Within a team, when those around you leave the floor one by one, the one who remains usually carries an extra weight no instrument can measure. I looked at Dinh Van Tam's legs during the morning session, and I heard the heart of a young fighter carrying an entire team on his shoulders.

Shooting: Defending a Title and the Trap of Memory

At the shooting range, Pham Quang Huy entered the men's 10 m air pistol as the defending champion from the previous Games. Lai Cong Minh and Nguyen Dinh Thanh were also in the field.

Shooting is a sport where memory carries unusual weight. A champion from the previous edition arrives with two pieces of luggage: self-belief and an expectation standard he built himself. Both can become drag.

In 10 m air pistol, the gap between gold and fourth place is often decided by a few rings in the final series. It is a sport of small accumulated errors over time, not of soaring moments. A shooter who holds a steady breathing rhythm across 60 shots usually beats one with a more brilliant single shot but an uneven rhythm.

I stood behind the observation area and noticed a small detail: how Pham Quang Huy set his pellet box on the table. He placed it about two centimetres off the line, then used his little finger to nudge it into the familiar position. That is a ritual. Ritual in shooting is not superstition; it is how the nervous system reassures itself before a task demanding near-total stillness.

Pressure in this event came from four directions. China and India are the two deepest shooting nations on the continent. South Korea is known for developing young shooters through a brutally competitive domestic system. Japan, with home advantage, always produces standout individuals in pistol events. These four programmes do not need a star; they need a system, and they have one.

Vietnam takes the opposite route: selective individual focus, deep investment in a few priority faces. That route is effective in the short term but places entire expectations on very few shoulders.

On September 24, those shoulders belonged to Pham Quang Huy, Lai Cong Minh and Nguyen Dinh Thanh. Three athletes, three entries, one event, and a success threshold defined by the previous edition.

Swimming: The Limits of the Schedule and the Value of Recovery

At the pool, Nguyen Huy Hoang, Tran Van Nguyen Quoc, Nguyen Thuy and Duong Van Hoang Quy all started.

Asian Games swimming is brutal in a way few recognise. The problem is not a single race but a chain of consecutive days with morning heats and evening finals. The athlete's body is pushed into a loop: swim all out, recover, swim all out again, while the biological clock allows no real rest.

In middle and long distances, medals are decided not by top speed but by the ability to hold a baseline pace when the body is already tired. Nguyen Huy Hoang, with international experience and an endurance base, is the most expected name. But expectation in Vietnamese swimming must always sit beside a fact: the continent's swimming powers — China, Japan, South Korea — have depth in every event, including events they do not consider priorities.

What interest me more at the pool is the recovery zone behind the stands. That is where athletes lie on mats, wrap towels, measure lactate, and speak in very short sentences. Over many years of watching, I have learned that the quality of a recovery zone says more about a delegation's real ambition than the entry list does.

A delegation that invests in recovery is a delegation that believes it will compete until the final day.

Athletics: Nguyen Thi Oanh and the Battle Against Herself

On the track, Nguyen Thi Oanh and Le Thi Tuyet Mai entered the women's 10,000 m. In the jumps area, Vu Thi Ngoc Ha and Nguyen Thi Huong competed in the triple jump.

Nguyen Thi Oanh is one of the most remarkable cases in Vietnamese sport over the past decade. She races multiple disciplines, from middle to long distance, and regularly has to choose between events within a single Games.

That choice is a trade-off outsiders struggle to feel. An athlete running both the 3,000 m steeplechase and the 10,000 m at the same Games is draining two different reserves: one for explosive power and hurdling technique, one for aerobic endurance. Recovering between the two is not just sleeping and eating; it is a physiology problem with a different answer for every body.

In the 10,000 m, tactics usually unfold in two phases. The first is position control to avoid getting boxed in mid-pack; the second is deciding when to surge. One mistake over half a lap in the middle of the race can burn the reserve needed for the final 800 m.

Notable rivals in Asian athletics usually come from China, Japan, India and a group of naturalized athletes of African origin who are reshaping the structure of several endurance events. Their presence raises questions about eligibility and about how national federations build squads.

For Vietnam, the path remains the old one: develop at home, compete internationally entry by entry, and concentrate expectations on individuals with a solid psychological base.

In the triple jump, the story differs. The event demands a blend of approach speed, spring and three-phase technique. Vu Thi Ngoc Ha and Nguyen Thi Huong belong to a younger group, and for them September 24 means accumulating experience more than medal pressure.

There is a big difference between entering a Games as a medal hunter and entering as an apprentice. The difference does not show in the stands. It shows in whether the athlete dares to take a risk on the final attempt.

Weightlifting: K'Duong, Tran Minh Tri and the North Korean Shadow

On the weightlifting platform, K'Duong and Tran Minh Tri competed. A notable rival in the 60 kg class was Pang Un Chol of the DPRK.

Weightlifting is the sport where information is most often concealed. North Korean delegations are known for rarely appearing at annual international meets, making form hard for rivals to assess. A lifter can vanish from the competition circuit for two years and return with a significantly increased total. That is the kind of variable that makes preparation far harder than facing a familiar opponent.

In weightlifting, tactics unfold in the choice of opening weight. Too high and the athlete may be forced to succeed while still cold. Too low and he becomes passive in later attempts. Coaches must weigh preserving chances against applying pressure.

K'Duong and Tran Minh Tri belong to the domestically developed group, with a stable technical base. Vietnamese weightlifting's chronic weakness over many years has not been technique but load tolerance at decisive weights. In other words, the problem is the threshold, not the movement.

That threshold is built in the gym, through thousands of lifts with no crowd, no medal, and nobody counting. Umtiti's goal began in a training session nobody watched, three months earlier. A successful lift on the platform begins in exactly the same place.

Rowing: Three Names and a Sport With No Room for Luck

On the water, Ho Thi Duy, Tran Thi Thu Hang and Luong Thi Thao competed in their rowing events.

Rowing is a sport where Vietnam has made a mark at recent Games, the product of long-term, systematic investment. It demands near-absolute synchrony among crew members. One person off rhythm slows the whole boat, and that misalignment is not always visible to the naked eye.

The difficulty lies in the fact that results are decided by things unobservable from shore: blade angle, the bow seat's breathing rhythm, the ability to hold a straight course when the wind shifts. At continental level, the gaps between boats are tiny, and the smallest error in the first 500 m multiplies across the remaining 1,500 m.

What stands out in Vietnamese rowing is the continuity of personnel. New faces appear without breaking the professional thread, because the development system already has standards. That is the sign of a sport that has moved past dependence on a single outstanding individual.

Artistic Gymnastics: Nguyen Thi Quynh Nhu and Youth That Must Be Paid For in Time

On the gymnastics floor, Nguyen Thi Quynh Nhu, Dang Ngoc Xuan Thien and Nguyen Van Khanh Phong competed.

Artistic gymnastics is cruel in its own way. A routine's value is set by difficulty and execution, and the two usually pull against each other. Raising difficulty to compete for medals means raising the risk of error. Lowering difficulty to compete safely means being out of the medal race from the start.

The sport's powers — China, Japan, South Korea, the DPRK — have very early development systems, with athletes starting professional training at an age when Vietnamese children are still in primary school.

That gap cannot be closed within one Games. It can only be closed decade by decade.

For Nguyen Thi Quynh Nhu, Dang Ngoc Xuan Thien and Nguyen Van Khanh Phong, the greatest value of September 24 lies in competing on a continental stage, being judged by the same panel as the leading athletes, and knowing exactly where they stand.

In sport, knowing where you stand is a medal nobody hands out.

Boxing: Nguyen Thi Tam and the Opponent From Chinese Taipei

In the ring, Nguyen Thi Tam entered the women's 51 kg against Guo Yi Xuan of Chinese Taipei.

Women's boxing in Asia has shifted structurally in recent years. Delegations such as China, India, Kazakhstan, the Philippines and Chinese Taipei all field well-drilled fighters who compete internationally regularly and own distinct styles.

Guo Yi Xuan is a typical Chinese Taipei fighter: mobile, quick to the rhythm, capable of scoring through short combinations. Against that type, Nguyen Thi Tam needs to control distance and avoid being dragged into a fast-paced exchange.

In amateur boxing, the scoring system counts valid scoring blows landed per round. That means a fighter can throw fewer punches but land more and still win. This is a fundamental difference from the spectator's view on screen, where continuous flurries feel more impressive than their actual scoreboard value.

Nguyen Thi Tam has the edge in international experience and physical base. But boxing is a sport where one mistake in three minutes can erase three months of preparation. No credit is given for the past.

The Contrarian Angle: The Trap of Counting Medals

There is a way of telling sports stories that I have seen repeat many times, in many countries, at many Games. It begins by naming a few athletes, attaching a golden adjective to them, and then building the whole narrative around whether they win a medal.

That approach makes headlines easy. It also distorts the real picture.

When four of Dinh Van Tam's wushu teammates all stopped in the semifinals, the information transmitted usually shrinks to one line: four bronzes. Nobody mentions how many bouts those four won to reach the semifinals, how many months they prepared, or what they gave up to stand there.

Concentrating an entire sport's gold expectation on one individual also creates a structural risk. It makes success more fragile than reality, and failure heavier than necessary. A sport with depth will always have more than one person capable of winning a medal.

In shooting, a similar situation appears in another form. Three Vietnamese shooters competed in one event, but the narrative usually revolves around the defending champion. When the success benchmark is defined by the previous edition's result, any other outcome is read as regression, even a top-continental placing.

I sat next to a Malaysian colleague in the press area that afternoon. He was covering his own delegation and writing about their medals too. He said something I wrote down immediately: "We only get to be happy for two days. On the third day, the calculations begin."

That is true for almost every small and mid-sized delegation in Asia. Brief joy, long pressure.

There is another blind spot rarely discussed: the operating cost of a delegation at the Games. Every entry comes with travel, accommodation, medical, coaching and logistics costs. When resources are spread thin across many sports, winning a medal in any sport becomes a result that must be read in the language of investment efficiency, not emotion.

A season is a symphony — the beat keeper knows when to strike and when to stay silent. A Games is the same. Knowing when to concentrate resources and when to conserve is a management skill, not a communications decision.

What Happens Behind the Medal Table

On September 24, I passed through eight different competition venues. In each, there was an area the spectators never see.

In wushu, it was the warm-up corridor before competition. In shooting, the gun-check and practice-target zone. At the pool, the recovery area behind the stands. In athletics, the warm-up loop behind the stadium. In weightlifting, the warm-up room with light bars. In rowing, the boat dock. In gymnastics, the mat zone. In boxing, the hand-wrapping room.

Those eight places share one thing: nobody counts medals there. Only people training.

The transfer market is only a mirror — look into it and you see a club's fears. Elite sport broadly works the same way: how a delegation allocates resources to its backstage areas reveals its real worries. A delegation worried about injuries invests in medical care. One worried about psychology hires psychologists. One worried about depth invests in youth development.

September 24 could not answer what Vietnam worries about. But it showed Vietnam present on eight fronts at once, and being present on eight fronts is a management achievement, not a stroke of luck.

The Pulse of the Competition Day

In the evening, I returned to the wushu arena. Dinh Van Tam walked out to the roar of the crowd. The coaching staff sat in the corner of the floor, saying nothing. Ou Jiaming emerged from the opposite side, a little taller than the memory I held from the tape I watched in Kuala Lumpur.

The bout unfolded the way big bouts usually do: slow, tight, with few explosive exchanges. The two fighters spent most of the time probing distance. Most strikes ended with the two touching and separating.

From the stands, spectators might find it dull. From floor level, it was a continuous negotiation.

I did not sit in the press area for that bout. I stood in the corridor behind, in the same spot where I had sat at 5:47 that morning. From there, I could hear the impacts, the breathing, and the coach calling out short phrases.

What happened on the floor had its own commentators. What happened in the three minutes between rounds had none.

What I Took Away

When the competition day ended, the medal table on the big screen was still glowing. Someone would update it. Someone would do the calculations.

I left the arena close to midnight, walking past the athletes' recovery area. A few were still sitting there, wrapped in towels, talking very quietly. Tomorrow they would compete again.

Since the 2026 World Cup, I have not missed a training session. I still hold that as a professional principle. But across many Games, I have added a clause: if you cannot be at the training session, be at the recovery room.

A competition day ends with a medal or without one. But it always begins with someone training alone in the light leaking through a door gap.

September 25 will follow. Vietnam's delegation will have more entries across more sports. The medal table will shift.

What is worth watching is not the ranking on that table.

What is worth watching is whether the recovery area is crowded the next morning, and whether the young ones like Vu Thi Ngoc Ha, Nguyen Thi Huong or Nguyen Van Khanh Phong step onto their next floor with the same focus as on day one.

Big teams do not wait for luck — they prepare for the silence before the storm.

A delegation learning to become a big team must learn the same thing: to prepare for the days nobody is counting.