Solitary Tracks on Vietnam's Long-Distance Scene: Rereading the Medal Table After the SEA Games Glow

In the first three days of SEA Games 31 at My Dinh Stadium, one name kept returning to the electronic scoreboard. The first time, a small-framed woman stepped off the 3000m steeplechase track with her legs soaked from the water jump. Less than two hours later, she stood at the start line of the 1500m. And by late afternoon, in the 5000m, she still had enough left to kick over the final two hundred metres. Nguyen Thi Oanh. Three distances, three gold medals, in a single competition day. I began writing about the long-distance girl before I understood what endurance really was. Back then I thought endurance was only about legs, lungs, and ten laps around the lake every morning. Only when I watched the way Oanh entered three races in the same day did I understand that endurance is a form of intelligence. The kind of intelligence that knows where to spend energy, where to release, and when to stay silent. But from that very afternoon, a question took root in me that has not been fully answered in the years since: does a gold medal on a single competition day reflect the true strength of a national athletics programme, or simply the thinness of the regional field? To answer that, I need to step back a few paces. The SEA Games is a tournament more than sixty years old, but the way it operates has changed quickly over the past fifteen years. The number of events has grown, the number of participating countries has grown, and above all, the way national federations allocate entries has changed. In long distances such as the 5000m and 10000m, the number of athletes who meet the qualifying standard is often small. That means a 5000m race at the SEA Games sometimes features only seven or eight athletes, rather than fifteen as at an Asian championship. That is the underlying condition. And within that condition, an athlete racing three distances in one day is not only a story about stamina. It is a story about how an entire delegation allocates its resources. Look at the competition schedule. At an international Grand Prix, organisers usually space out the distances so that athletes get at least one rest day between heavy events. At the SEA Games, the schedule is compressed by the total duration of the tournament, by the number of events, and by television. As a result, a national-team runner like Oanh may have to run seven and a half laps in the 3000m steeplechase, then a few hours later run four laps in the 1500m, then twelve and a half laps in the 5000m. The total race volume in one day exceeds twenty kilometres, not counting warm-ups and cool-downs. From a physiological standpoint, this is a problem of two energy systems. The 1500m relies mainly on the glycolytic and lactate systems, meaning short bursts below the tolerance threshold. The 5000m and 10000m rely more on the oxidative system, meaning the ability to burn fat and hold a steady rhythm. Switching repeatedly between these two systems within a single day demands an unusual physical base, but it also demands rapid recovery after each high-intensity effort. In athletics circles, this is called the ability to "race again." Not to race again over a short distance, but to race again at peak fitness, after an hour or several hours of rest. Very few athletes in the world sustain this at international level. At regional level, it is more feasible, because the general standard of opponents is lower. And this is the point that must be stated plainly: Oanh's feat of three golds in a single day is a personal miracle, but it should not be read as proof of the absolute strength of Vietnamese athletics. It proves something else: the lack of depth in the regional field over long distances, and the dependence of Vietnamese results on a few outstanding individuals. I have spent many evenings rewatching footage of Vietnam's races at the last two SEA Games. One recurring pattern stands out. Over short and middle distances, Vietnam usually has two or three athletes capable of contending for medals. Over long distances, that number often drops to one, sometimes to none. Which means that in the 10000m, the half marathon, and the marathon, we are walking with one person instead of a group. That is the familiar risk structure. If that person is injured, we lose an entire distance. If that person's form dips, we have no plan B. An abandoned stand still holds the old applause, but the medal table holds nothing for those who come after. This must be said clearly to avoid misunderstanding. I am not diminishing anyone's achievement. Three gold medals in a single competition day is something many countries in the region can only dream of. But sports analysis is not a ceremony of praise. If we only praise, we will never see the gap behind the medal. Where is that gap? It is in the selection system. It is in the youth competitions. It is in the local training centres, where a single coach must manage thirty children with one stopwatch and one notebook. I once visited such a centre. It was 2026, when I was a final-year student in Nha Trang, following a friend to an athletics meet. There I met a nineteen-year-old runner who ran the 10000m with an unusual foot-strike technique. No one paid her any attention because she finished seventh. But I spent the following months writing about her training alongside a coach who had been almost forgotten. Through that story I realised something I still carry into every piece I write: behind every record there is a human fate, and that fate deserves to be told before it becomes a number. So what about the specific tactical problem? When analysing a long race, there are three basic indicators I always record in my notebook. The first is pace distribution. An athlete who runs evenly from start to finish usually has low pace variance, meaning each lap takes almost the same time. An athlete with a finishing kick usually holds a slower pace through the middle, then accelerates sharply over the final four hundred metres. Both approaches are valid, depending on the physical base and on the opponents. The second is starting position and movement within the pack. On a track, runners tend to hug the inside rail to save distance. But hugging the rail also means being locked into a line, unable to break out when needed. Many young Vietnamese athletes lose not because they lack speed, but because they get stuck in a marking position. The third is the ability to endure in the decisive stretch. From roughly the final six hundred metres onward, the body has depleted its glycogen and begins to depend on willpower. This is when everything on the pace-analysis chart becomes meaningless, and only instinct remains. Looking at all three indicators, an athlete racing three distances in one day is a particularly hard case to analyse. Because each race demands a different tactical structure, yet all three take place on the same day. The runner is forced to calculate not only for each distance, but for the whole competition day. That is why I argue that versatility is a conditional strategy. Here I want to say something contrary to ordinary intuition. People often praise versatile athletes, treating them as symbols of perfection. But in modern athletics, specialisation is the path to the world summit. Looking at recent Olympic Games, almost no athlete has stood on the podium in both the 1500m and the 5000m. The distances have been specialised to the point where the human body can no longer recover enough to play on several courts at once. So why does versatility exist at regional level? The answer lies in the disparity of standards. When opponents are weaker, a strong athlete can use a superior physical base to cover several distances. But when stepping onto the continental or world stage, that very base becomes a burden: the runner is not specialised enough to compete at any single distance at the highest level. This is precisely the blind spot that the regional medal table conceals. A glittering SEA Games gold tally can hide the truth that at Asian level, the gap to the leading group remains large. In the women's 5000m, the Olympic qualifying standard usually sits around fifteen minutes, while some regional medal-winning performances are several dozen seconds above that. Every second over a long distance is a physiological gap that is very hard to close. That gap cannot be filled by determination. It can only be filled by a system: by training programmes, by nutrition, by sports medicine, by the number of athletes taking part in their teenage years. And this is where I believe the role of sports journalism becomes clear. If the writer stops at the medal, readers will believe we are at the summit. If the writer digs deeper, readers will know we are standing on a narrow peak. The solitary track is not on the running track. It is in the distance between what we have achieved and what we can sustain. In 2026, when stadiums closed because of the pandemic, I ran alone and understood why athletes fear the night. That feeling is not a physical fear. It is the fear of being forgotten. An athlete accustomed to applause suddenly has only their own breathing. During that period, I wrote a series about three athletes training alone at home. One built a wooden frame on his rooftop to practise hurdling technique every morning. I recorded each session through video calls, and realised that the solitude of the athlete mirrors the solitude of the writer facing a reality that does not match the ideal. Since then, I have understood that any sports analysis, if it wants to be honest, must accept one thing: there are gaps that data cannot fully tell, and there are data that emotion cannot replace. Back to Vietnam's long-distance scene. So what should we do? First, widen the intake. Over long distances, results do not come from sudden talent but from years of accumulation. An elite marathon runner usually needs six to eight years of base training before peaking. Vietnam has advantages in climate, terrain, and a tradition of endurance running in the northern mountainous provinces and the Central Highlands. But that advantage only turns into results if there is a youth competition system dense enough to keep young runners through adolescence, when most female athletes drop out. Second, accept selective specialisation. Versatility at regional level makes sense because it maximises the number of medals at a single Games. But at continental level, we need athletes prepared specifically for a single distance, with programmes designed over multiple years. The two strategies are not mutually exclusive. They can run in parallel, as long as the coaching staff knows what it is optimising for. Third, keep records. I always have a notebook and a separate spreadsheet for every athlete I follow. Each line records a day, a session, an indicator. It sounds trivial, but over time it is the only way to know whether an athlete is improving or regressing. Precision is a ritual. It is not glamorous, but it is honest. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, change the way we read results. A SEA Games gold is a real achievement. But it should not be the end of the story; it should be the beginning of a larger question: after that moment, what did we build? Those working in Vietnamese sport are living through an interesting period. Facilities are better, access to sports science is easier, and fans follow more closely than ever. The opportunity to shift from individual results to systemic results has never been clearer. That is why I still sit in the stand after the lights have gone out. Not to wait for another medal, but to see who stays on the track when no one is clapping. Fans may not enter the stadium, but the stadium is never without them. And what I am waiting for is not another three-medal afternoon, but the day when we no longer need one person to carry an entire distance alone. On that day, the medal table will still look beautiful, but it will be truer.