Vietnam's top female sprinter Truong Thanh Hang had her right leg broken in a motorcycle accident during a regular practice along with her fellow athletes on a wide road along the seashore of Da Nang central city on Friday.

According to local police in Lien Chieu district, at about 6:00am on August 31, when Hang was running on Nguyen Tat Thanh Street, at a distance of 0.6m from the roadside, a motorcyclist unexpectedly hit her from behind.

Both the sprinter and the motorist were rushed to Da Nang General Hospital for emergency care after the accident.

The man, who crashed the motorbike into Hang, was later identified as Nguyen Van Giang, 20, a local student. Further investigations are still underway.

Doctors at the hospital told Tuoi Tre on Saturday that the sprinter’s health is now in stable condition after she underwent a two-hour surgery.

The doctors said Hang sufferred multiple injuries on the head, face, hands, legs, and hips and had two broken bones in the right leg upon being addmited into the hospital.

“It takes about three months for her to play light exercises and 6 months to do higher-intensity ones,” a doctor, who is caring for Hang, told Tuoi Tre.

Ho Thi Tu Tam, Hang’s coach, said many generations of her students have practice track-and-field on Nguyen Tat Thanh Street since 1998 because “this is an ideal road for sprinters”.

Tam added Hang will have to miss a chance to compete in the upcoming 27th Sea Games to be held in Myanmar next year due to her broken leg.

Truong Thanh Hang sprinted to a gold medal in the women’s 800m event at the Asian Athletics Championships held in Kobe, Japan in July, 2011.

In 2010, Truong Thanh Hang won a silver medal in the women’s 1,500m at the 16th Asian Games in China, the best ever performance in an Asiad by a Vietnamese athlete.