【ket qua bong đa u23 chau a】Female boxer "hunts gold" for Taekwondo

International Achievements

Introduced by the gym teacher at school,ket qua bong đa u23 chau a Linh Tam came to Taekwondo division in order to ask to become a disciple. The 13-year-old young girl from Phu An Commune (Phu Vang District), who has considerable height and long stride, immediately got a nod from the coach.

Linh Tam spends her spare time self-training

After five months, with outstanding qualities, the female athlete born in 2001 was quickly transferred to train in the national youth team. With the talent, ardor and ability to meet difficult drills, only after two years (2015) did Linh Tam win a gold medal in Southeast Asia Youth Championship, and then a gold medal in National Youth Championship in 2015.

After the first impressive achievements in the domestic and international arenas, the mounting excitement and determination have helped the young female boxer receive medals in the tournaments. Ever since 2016, Linh Tam has reaped great achievements in the domestic and international competitions. She becomes a renowned boxer in weight class of 55kg, especially after winning the gold medal at  Southeast Asia Youth Champion in 2017 (in Malaysia) and the gold medal at Taekwondo Malaysia Open G1 Ranking Champion in 2018 - the tournament gathering up to  800 athletes from 19 countries, including many big names in the world Taekwondo.

The weight class at which Ho Thi Linh Tam competed was Olympic weight class with the huge number of athletes who had training and competed at tournaments.  In Vietnam alone, more than 30 boxers, no less than 5 of whom in the strong units were qualified to scramble for the golden medal, registered at this weight class. It is a praiseworthy achievement for Linh Tam to get "gold" from these tournaments.

Coach Pham Ngoc Thanh, Head of Department of Taekwondo said that Linh Tam had many factors considered to be the strengths: good body and technique, ability to quickly respond to changes in the law from World Taekwondo Federation and especially ardor as well as ability to master the match. The female athlete always entered the competition floor with confidence and knew how to seize the opportunity from the opponent's weakness to deal a blow and score.

Linh Tam is also hard-working and determined. "In the first year of training, unfortunately, Linh Tam was injured and had to stop training for a while, but the female athlete did not give up. She still tried to wait for the restored arm bone to revert to training. In addition to the training hours in accordance with the lesson plan made by the training board, Linh Tam self-trained in her free time. Assiduousness and taking pains to practice difficult exercises soon enabled the young female athlete get achievements,"Thanh confirmed.

 Consistent target

Worryingly, when reaching maturity in achievement and age, many athletes (in most sports) run a risk of finding a new landing or breaking up with the team for many reasons. However, Ho Thi Linh Tam always dismisses that thought when asked.

A technical training session of Linh Tam (left) with her teammates

Linh Tâm affirmed that the achievements have been only the initial successes, and she was unsatisfiable. The passion and desire for achievement in major tournaments have been the target the female athlete set herself to strive for. Currently, the female athlete is in the final stage of the youth, preparing to leave the youth team, so the desire to "hunt" achievements in the new level arena is very great.

Hue’s Taekwondo female athlete has the strength of long stride to give the opponent kicks to score 3-4 points, but the weakness is her uncertain ability to defend, or sometimes her subjectivity creating loopholes, so Linh Tam's future plan is to focus on promoting the available strengths, carefully studying and practicing the blows easy to score points when she competes with the electronic armor.

At the same time, the female athlete also needs to learn more the ability to defend, resist the opponent’s attacks to easily win convincingly. A fairly interesting "alternative" the young female athlete reveal is that she will spend a lot of time training with male boxers. The reason is that the male boxers deliver strong blows, forcing Linh Tam to try harder to keep pace with and learn more from them.

Ho Thi Linh Tam said, “Ahead of me lies a long path while my age is young, so I will train and compete with all my strength and ability.” In addition to the individual achievement targets, the female athlete is also determined to contribute achievements to the provincial sports while Taekwondo is a key sport of Thua Thien Hue.

Story and photos: Huu Phuc