A Vietnamese sports official has denied that Team Vietnam failed at the 2014 Asian Games (Asiad), even though they did not earn as many gold medals as targeted. It is incorrect to say Vietnam was a flop at the 2014 Asiad for winning just one gold medal, said Lam Quang Thanh, deputy chief of the General Department of Sports and Physical Training, under the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism.

The 17th Asiad opened in Incheon, South Korea, on September 19 and closed on October 4.

The high ranking official, who acted as head of the Vietnamese sports delegation to the Games, made his statement in a program televised on national channel VTV1 on October 4.

At the 15-day multi-sport event, Team Vietnam ranked 21st in the final medal table with one gold, 10 silver, and 25 bronze medals.

Sports teams are usually ranked on the basis of the number of golds they win at such an event. If two teams have the same number of golds, then their silvers and bronzes will be taken into account.

Thanh argued that Vietnamese athletes won medals for the first time in many events featured in the Olympics, such as swimming, weightlifting, cycling, track and field, fencing, boxing, and gymnastics, although they were not golds.

Thanh added that Vietnam ‘grew in breadth’ at the Asian Games.

Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and Myanmar grabbed more gold medals than Vietnam, but the Vietnamese earned more medals in more sports than them, he said.

The official pointed out that Vietnam was better than these Southeast Asian nations because its athletes collected a total of 36 medals in 13 sports.

The last thing Thanh mentioned to duck the word ‘failure’ was that Vietnam’s target of winning two or three gold medals was merely something to strive for, not a base on which failure or success would be determined.

Based on the ‘development in breadth,’ as the official noted, it is easy to conclude that Vietnamese athletes were as good as their North Korean rivals, because each team won 36 medals.

North Korea finished seventh in the medal tally, with 11 golds, 11 silvers, and 14 bronzes.

Asiad is the competition arena of the most elite athletes, not a forum for grassroots sports, a veteran sports journalist wrote to Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper.

That is why the Olympic Council of Asia ranked Hong Kong, with a total of 42 medals, in 13th place, below North Korea, because the Koreans won five more gold medals, the journalist added.

Vietnam left the 12th Asiad in 1994 in Japan with a gold medal collected by taekwondo fighter Tran Quang Ha.

Now 20 years on, Vietnam bid farewell to the 17th Asiad in South Korea again with only one gold medal, by wushu artist Duong Thuy Vi.

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