Athletes of Vietnamese national teams are now in their peak training period in Hanoi ahead of the 2015 Southeast Asian (SEA) Games to be held in Singapore from June 5 to 16.

Vietnam will send 440 athletes to compete in 27 out of 36 sports at the 28th SEA Games.

As usual, Vietnamese sports authorities have set a target for their players at the tournament, which is organized every two years.

Accordingly, Vietnam aims to win 56-74 gold medals and have the national men’s football (soccer) team advance to the final match of the tourney, which will offer 402 sets of medals.

Nguyen Trong Ho, vice director of the Nhon national sports training center in the capital city where the athletes are camping, said players will soon be given a special food ration of VND300,000 (US$14) each per day.

Players in some sports have VND400,000 ($18.6) each for food a day.

Athletes at Nhon are given a nutrition course led by Hungarian nutritionist Ketskes Norbert.

Tran Duc Phan – vice head of the Sports General Department under the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism – said that it is important for athletes to join the nutrition course as Vietnam has no nutrition expert for each national team.

From this week, all athletes training at the Nhon center are allowed to leave their camp on Wednesdays and Sundays.

Vietnam is about to send two female runners, Quach Thi Lan and Nguyen Thi Huyen, to the U.S. for training.

The national shooting team will also leave for training in South Korea on March 25.

Some of the team members will fly to the U.S. to partake in the 2015 ISSF Shotgun, Rifle, and Pistol World Cup Finals from May 10 to 19 before returning home for the SEA Games in June.

Gymnasts will leave for training in Canada from March 30 to April 20.

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