Thuy Linh: 'The Asian Games Arena Is Very Harsh, It Is Not Easy to Win a Medal'

At 26 years old, Nguyễn Thùy Linh has appeared at the Asian Games three times and competed at two Olympic Games. But when asked about her medal chances at the 20th Asian Games in Japan, Vietnam's top badminton player did not hide her caution: 'The Asian Games arena is very harsh, it is not easy to win a medal.' This brief answer contains an entire system of problems that Vietnamese sport has never dared to confront directly. Thùy Linh is not one to complain. Over nine years of following international badminton tournaments, I have noticed a pattern: elite players who grew up in well-funded training environments rarely need to say things like this. They may lose, they may be eliminated early, but they never have to worry about lacking professional coaches, high-level sparring partners, or the financial resources to compete in enough tournaments to build their rankings. Thùy Linh faces all of this alone. In the interview with Dân Trí newspaper, Thùy Linh did not directly mention financial figures, but the Vietnamese public is all too familiar with this story. Vietnam's national badminton team has lacked foreign coaches for years. Not because no suitable candidates exist, but because the budget to maintain a professional coach from badminton powerhouses like Indonesia, Japan, or Denmark ranges from 8,000 to 15,000 USD per month — a sum that the Vietnam Badminton Federation struggles to sustain consistently. Meanwhile, regional rivals like Thailand and Indonesia have maintained stable foreign coaching systems for over a decade. This creates an inescapable loop. Without high-quality sparring partners, Thùy Linh must seek international tournaments to maintain her competitive edge. But competing in enough ranking tournaments requires funding. Funding depends on competitive results. And competitive results depend on training quality — an endless cycle that Thùy Linh herself acknowledged as 'very harsh' when describing the Asian Games arena. At the Asian Games, women's singles in Asia is currently dominated by Japan, China, South Korea, and Indonesia. According to BWF World Rankings data from 2026, the top three players in the world all come from Asia. Thùy Linh currently ranks 57th in the world — the highest ranking in Vietnamese badminton history — but still significantly behind the top 20 in both technique and physical fitness. This reality exposes a stark truth: her individual achievements have far outpaced the structural capacity of the system supporting her. Thùy Linh's story is not new. At the 2026 Asian Games in Jakarta-Palembang, she reached the round of 16 and exited. By the 2026 Asian Games in Hangzhou, she advanced to the round of 16 — clear improvement, but still far from the quarterfinals. Each time she takes one step forward, the pressure from expectations increases proportionally, while the support system remains unchanged. An athlete can surpass personal limits in a single match, but cannot surpass structural limits over an entire season. Strangely, Vietnamese media often avoids deep analysis of these structural athletic gaps. Instead, post-tournament articles typically revolve around emotions — 'pride,' 'regret,' 'try harder' — rather than asking questions about mechanisms. Thùy Linh implicitly raised this issue when she described the harshness of the Asian Games arena. She was not complaining; she was describing a reality that, if carefully listened to, reveals the most direct yet subtle critique of Vietnam's current sports structure. Looking ahead, the 20th Asian Games in Japan could be Thùy Linh's fourth Asian Games, or it could mark a turning point if Vietnam's sports investment system begins to change its approach. She has proven that an individual can reach world ranking 57th under suboptimal conditions. The question is: if those conditions improved, how far could she go? And the bigger question: does Vietnam's sports system want to know the answer?