The Silent Touch: A Journey to Find the Voice of Vietnamese Women's Swimming

The pool was silent, but the voice from the changing room never stopped echoing. I remember that late March afternoon in 2026, when the entire country entered its first lockdown. The Khanh Hoa provincial pool was closed, lights off, the water surface as flat as a mirror no one was looking into. I stood there, writing notes in my familiar notebook: no tournaments, no results, no spectators. But I knew, behind that tightly closed changing room door, there were stories never told.

Vietnamese women's swimming has always existed in the shadow of men's football and even women's football. Throughout my 27-year career, I have witnessed generation after generation of female swimmers silently dedicating themselves, then quietly leaving without a word of gratitude. They have no packed stadiums, no million-dollar sponsorship deals, no live television coverage. They only have early mornings waking at 4 AM, monotonous laps repeated endlessly, and dreams that were never spoken aloud.

When I started my career at Thanh Nien Newspaper in 2026, swimming was classified as a 'high-performance sport' but received the most modest media attention. National records were set, broken, then set again, but no name truly entered the public consciousness. I remember business trips to training centers in the North, where 16- and 17-year-old girls trained in freezing cold pools, lacking equipment, but with eyes burning with passion.

Vietnamese women's swimming stands before a paradox: we have genuine talent, but we do not have a system to nurture it.

The story of Nguyen Thi Anh Vien is a prime example. The girl from Can Tho made history by winning gold at the 2026 SEA Games with a time of 4 minutes 38 seconds 78 in the 400-meter freestyle. That was a touch that changed everything — or at least, we thought so. Anh Vien became an icon, praised by the press, honored by the state. But behind that glory, I witnessed a different reality: she had to train far from family, endure tremendous pressure from national expectations, and when her results declined, no one stood up to protect her.

I went to Russia to find answers about how they train athletes, and only found more questions. Why can a country with such a long swimming tradition as Russia systematically produce athletes like Anh Vien, while we can only produce one Anh Vien in two decades? The answer lies not in talent — Vietnamese people can certainly swim fast — but in the system of selection, training, and most importantly, retaining female athletes.

Based on my experience following matches and SEA Games, I notice a repeating pattern: Vietnamese female swimmers typically peak at ages 17-19, then quickly decline and retire before age 23. Not because they run out of talent, but because the system has no mechanism to keep them. Academic pressure, family pressure, lack of regular international competition opportunities, and especially inadequate compensation — all combine to push them away from the pool.

In 2026, I conducted the 'Voice from the Changing Room' online interview series — a project originally for women's football, but it quickly spread to swimming when I received calls from retired swimmers. One of them, a former national team member, told me she had to work as an online seller to make ends meet after retiring. She did not regret dedicating her youth to swimming, but she regretted that no one prepared her for life after sport.

Load management is romanticized, but in reality it makes way for commercial tours and friendlies. In Vietnamese women's swimming, the problem is not a crowded competition schedule — because in reality our athletes compete very little. The problem is the quality of training and recovery. I have witnessed athletes pushed into grueling training schedules without adequate medical monitoring, leading to chronic injuries and premature retirement.

Look at how Japan and South Korea build their swimming systems. They do not just invest in facilities — although that is important — they invest in people: properly trained coaches, nutritionists, psychologists, and most importantly, career development pathways after retirement. A Japanese swimmer knows that if she dedicates 10 years to her career, she will have a position in the system afterward. In Vietnam, the question 'what will I do after retiring' remains a haunting obsession for every female athlete.

I remember interviewing a 19-year-old athlete who had just won gold at the national championship. She told me: 'I know I cannot swim forever. But I do not know what I will do after.' That sentence haunted me for years. We create champions, but we do not create people with futures.

Meanwhile, the development of world women's swimming is advancing at a dizzying pace. At the Tokyo 2026 Olympics, Olympic records were constantly broken. Athletes like Katie Ledecky of the United States or Ariarne Titmus of Australia are not just exceptional athletes — they are products of a complete system where sports science, nutrition, and psychology are tightly integrated. The gap between us and them is not just about results, but about development philosophy.

But I am not writing this article to criticize. I am writing to ask: what do we want Vietnamese women's swimming to become in the next 10 years? If we continue the current model — relying on a few gifted talents, lacking support systems, and having no sustainable development pathway — we will continue to create Anh Viens and then let them disappear. But if we are truly serious about this sport, we need to start with the basics: coach training, building youth development programs, creating talent retention mechanisms, and most importantly — listening to the voice from the changing room.

When there are no spectators, we truly listen to athletes. The pandemic gave us that opportunity. During those months when pools were closed, I listened to more stories than ever before. Athletes spoke of the fear of being forgotten, of their families' silent sacrifices, of dreams left unfinished. And I realized that what they need is not just recognition — but a system that truly treats them as human beings, not just medal-winning tools.

Where are the women? The question I asked at the 2026 World Cup in Russia remains relevant. In Vietnamese women's swimming, women are everywhere — in the pool, in the training room, on trips far from home — but they are nearly invisible in discussions about sports development strategy. They have no voice in deciding competition schedules, nutrition plans, or career plans. They are only asked to swim, and when they can no longer swim, they are forgotten.

I still remember that afternoon in Nha Trang in 2026, when I launched the 'Beautiful Women on the Pitch' channel — a channel about women's football, but also where I began telling stories about women in sports generally. The opening match had only 2,347 views, but 59 thank-you comments from veteran female fans showed me that there is a community yearning to be heard. And this is also true for swimming: there are genuine fans, but they have no channel to connect with athletes.

In Nha Trang that year, I did not just open a channel — I opened a door. That door led me to stories I never thought I would hear. And through those stories, I understood that Vietnamese women's swimming does not lack talent — we lack a system that knows how to nurture and cherish that talent.

The lesson from my own mistakes is also part of this story. In 2026, at the World Cup in Russia, I mispronounced Luka Modric's name three times in a row in a video episode. After being harshly criticized by the online community, I spent four weeks reviewing Croatia's matches, learning correct pronunciation, and publicly apologizing. That lesson taught me: perfectionism is not about never making mistakes, but about having the courage to admit and correct them. And I believe Vietnamese women's swimming also needs such a correction — courageously acknowledging the system's shortcomings and starting to rebuild on solid foundations.

Vietnamese women's swimming may not have the glamour of football, but it has a value few sports possess: resilience. A swimmer must face hours of solitary training in water, with no teammates to rely on, no spectators to draw strength from. They have only themselves and their goals. And it is that solitude that creates the most resilient people in sports.

But resilience cannot replace a good system. A resilient athlete still needs a good coach, a proper nutrition plan, a long-term development plan, and a future after sport. When we lack these, we lose not just athletes — we lose an entire generation of potential talent.

Let me tell you about a girl named Linh, 15 years old, from a province in the Mekong Delta. Linh swims very fast — so fast that local coaches were astonished. But Linh does not have the conditions for professional training: the pool near her home is only open 3 months a year, her family cannot afford to send her to the city for training, and her school has no athlete support program. Linh is one of hundreds of talents missed every year because the system has no mechanism to discover and nurture them.

Linh's story is not an exception. It is the rule. And that rule will not change until we truly treat women's swimming as a national priority, not just on paper but in concrete action.

I do not have a complete answer to this problem. I only have questions — and a belief that when we truly listen to the women who touch the water every day, we will find the way forward. The voice from the changing room never lies. It just needs to be heard.

That silent touch — the touch of Vietnamese girls swimming in the dark — will no longer be silent if we decide to listen. And I believe, one day not far away, those voices will echo farther than any record.