Trinh Van Vinh was eliminated early in the men's 61 kg competition in Paris on August 7 after failing all three attempts. In his final attempt, he lifted the weight over his head, but lacked the strength to stabilize himself and fell backwards.
Vinh's performance reflects the Vietnamese team's struggles at the 2024 Paris Olympics, where they fell short of their medal target.
Just one year ago, Vietnam topped the medal list at the 32nd Southeast Asian Games held in Cambodia, winning a total of 355 medals, including 136 gold medals. Vietnam won 28 more gold medals than Thailand and topped the Southeast Asian Games rankings for the second consecutive year.
However, Vietnam's achievements at the Asian Games and the Olympics tell a different story.
At the 2022 Asian Games, which were postponed to 2023 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Vietnam ranked sixth in Southeast Asia. At the 2024 Paris Olympics, Vietnam was the only country among the six powerhouses in Southeast Asia to fail to win a medal.
Not only has Vietnam fallen far behind other Southeast Asian contingents this year, but there are also signs of a decline in its performance compared to past tournaments.
Vietnam's Olympic sports peak was in 2016, when shooter Hoang Xuan Vinh won one gold and one silver medal. That year, Vietnam produced 23 athletes on the world stage, the most of any country. Since then, the number of athletes has been gradually declining.
Vietnam returned to the Olympics in 1988 but failed to win a medal in any of the three sports until female taekwondo athlete Tran Huu Ngan won a silver medal at Sydney 2000. The number of Vietnamese athletes competing in the Olympics increased until 2016.
Vinh's victory in Rio de Janeiro lifted Vietnam to third place in Southeast Asia, behind only Thailand and Indonesia to have won Olympic gold medals to date.
However, Vietnam will fail to win medals in consecutive Olympics in Tokyo in 2020 and Paris in 2024 for the first time since 1996. During this period, the Philippines won three Olympic gold medals.
At Paris 2024, Southeast Asian nations won a total of 15 medals, including five golds. The Philippines won two gold medals, with gymnast Carlos Yulo winning a double, while Thailand won the gold medal in the women's 49kg category, with taekwondo athlete Panipak Wongpattanakit successfully defending her title.
Indonesia's Vedrick Leonard won gold in speed climbing and Rizki Juniansya won gold in the men's 73kg weightlifting, marking their first gold medal outside of badminton.
Weightlifting has historically brought the most Olympic medals to Southeast Asian countries, with a total of 38 medals, including seven gold medals. All three Thai weightlifters who competed in the Paris Olympics won medals, winning two silver medals and one bronze medal.
The event is divided into weight classes, which is well suited to the smaller physiques of Southeast Asian athletes. Vietnam has also won two Olympic medals in weightlifting: a silver medal in 2008 with Hoang Anh Tuan and a bronze medal four years later with Tran Le Quoc Toan. At the 32nd Southeast Asian Games, Vietnam won four gold medals in weightlifting, second only to Indonesia's five gold medals, but this record was not repeated at the Olympics.
Southeast Asian athletes have won medals in 14 Olympic sports, mostly in different weight classes such as weightlifting, boxing and taekwondo, traditional Asian sports such as table tennis and badminton, or sports that do not require height such as gymnastics, diving, shooting and archery.
The medals won in track and field belong to the Philippines, but they were won almost 100 years ago.
Most of Southeast Asia's medals at the 2024 Olympics will not be won in new sports, but rather in areas where countries have focused on their natural strengths based on the factors mentioned above. Prior to Indonesia's Juniamsya's gold medal in weightlifting, the country had won 15 medals in the sport, making the 21-year-old weightlifter's achievements predictable.
Thailand won its first taekwondo medal at the 2004 Athens Games, four years after Vietnam's Ngan won silver.
Since then, however, Vietnamese taekwondo has consistently won medals at the Olympic Games in the women's 49kg category, making Panipak's consecutive gold medals unsurprising. Meanwhile, Vietnamese taekwondo has not won an Olympic medal since Ngan.
Thailand's Panipak Wongpattanakit expresses her joy after winning the gold medal in the women's taekwondo 49kg category at the Paris Olympics on August 7, 2024. Photo provided by Reuters
Another effective strategy for Southeast Asian countries is to focus on events with less competition or interest from other countries.
Only 11 countries participated in the men's speed climbing event, in which Indonesia's Vedrick Leonard won gold, while in the women's event, Razia Sarsabira missed out on a medal for Indonesia by just 0.03 seconds in the semi-finals.
Speed climbing made its Olympic debut in Paris, with athletes competing in a knockout format over the course of just a few seconds – even the slightest mistake could mean elimination – opening up the chances of a medal for many countries.
