Vietnam hopes to see more international events

Vietnam hopes to see more international events

By Le Phan Hoai Nam

HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam (Reuter): Vietnam, distracted and
isolated by war for decades, is starting to see more
international sports events now that its economy is growing and
opening to the outside world.

It is a development that most of the 72 million Vietnamese
welcome.

"Sport has really touched the hearts of the Vietnamese people
and they want to see high class, high performance athletes in
action," said Ian Billingham, whose Hong Kong-based International
Management Group helped find sponsors for the recent World Cup
badminton tournament staged here.

The Vietnamese are keen on sport. People hit shuttlecocks in
the streets and small boys play football.

Vietnamese fans in their millions followed the World Cup
soccer finals live on television for the first time this year.

But playing facilities and cash for equipment are limited in
what remains one of the world's poorest countries.

Following a table tennis World Cup tournament in December
1992, the badminton event was only the second in which fans could
see a sport's top players in action in Vietnam.

Both Vietnamese players in the badminton tournament, a man and
a woman, were beaten in the first round. For spectator Hoang Loc,
60, it was an eye-opener which made him realise how far the
Vietnamese are behind the top world players.

Loc said. "You don't need to be physically strong or have a
lot of equipment to play this sport. I can't understand why the
gap is so big."

Pham Van Kiet, vice-chairman of the Vietnam Olympic Committee,
predicted that in seven to 10 years, with international help,
Vietnam would catch up with its Asian neighbors.

Vietnamese won the under-16 world chess championship and three
Asian chess titles last year. A Vietnamese woman won the world
championship in wushu, an Asian martial art. Neither sport has a
high-profile.

Big difficulties

Promoters see lack of stadiums and sponsorship as big
difficulties but predict a good future for international events.

Bruce Aitken, whose Hong Kong-based Sports Asia Limited has
helped stage nine sports events or concerts in Vietnam since
1992, says it needs more venues such as an indoor stadium to hold
10,000 people.

"That's a major problem right now and that's not an easy
problem to solve, it's going to take time," he said.

There was also only a handful of companies so far prepared to
sponsor sports events in Vietnam.

"The really difficult breakthrough we are trying to make is to
broaden the number of companies that support sporting events as
the way to market their products, as an alternative method to
just plastering the city with signs, as you see in Ho Chi Minh
City," Aitken said.

The Heineken company, which brews locally, sponsored the
badminton tournament and general manager Johan Doyer said they
would back more in future.

Sports Asia has promoted three marathons in Vietnam and a
world qualifying series surfing contest last year. It plans
tennis and soccer events.

But it will be early next century before Vietnam is able to
host a multi-venue event like the Southeast Asian Games, a
spokesman for the Physical Culture and Sports Department said.

"Our policy is to try to hold international tournaments for
one specific game, like we've just done in badminton...," he
said. Volleyball, judo and taekwondo are other sports in which
international tournaments have been staged.

By seeing top players in action, Vietnamese learn to play
better, the spokesman said.