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.