Vietnamese Badminton 2026: When Young Feet No Longer Fear the Shadow of the Training Hall

On a March morning in 2026 at the Bac Ninh Badminton Training Center, the sound of shuttlecocks hitting the wooden floor rang out steadily from 5 a.m. I stood behind the dividing net, watching a 14-year-old girl I will temporarily call M. - whom the in-house coaches nicknamed "the small version" of Nguyen Thuy Linh. M. had just completed a 200-shot jumping smash drill without panting. Coach Kim Jin-woo, a Korean invited by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism to serve as technical advisor for the youth team since 2026, stood beside me and nodded slightly: "This girl has feet as soft as rubber. If I had met her five years ago in Incheon, I would have invited her to the club right away." That sentence brought me back to the first time I set foot in a Korean badminton arena eight years ago - and made me wonder what had changed in how we train young athletes. Vietnamese badminton in recent years is no longer a "strange phenomenon" on the world map. From Nguyen Tien Minh's position in the world top 30 during 2026-2026, to the rise of Nguyen Thuy Linh (BWF top 25 by the end of 2026), and especially the men's doubles championship at the 2026 Southeast Asian Games of the pair Le Duc Phat - Pham Van Truc, Vietnamese badminton is in a phase that few dared to imagine a decade ago. However, beneath the glamorous spotlight lies a training structure that is quietly changing - and not everyone is talking about it. The cooperation with the Badminton Korea Association (BKA) since 2026, with the signing of an agreement to bring Korean experts to work at youth training centers in Hanoi, Bac Ninh, and Ho Chi Minh City, has created a technical boost that, according to Mr. Park Sung-han - BKA Technical Director - is an opportunity for us to look at ourselves through your eyes. I was present at the Bac Ninh Center from June 2026, when the invitation from the Vietnam Badminton Federation brought me - a sports commentator who spent eight years following badminton in Korea - back to write a series of articles about the youth training model. To understand this change, I need to return to a specific moment. In August 2026, at the Vietnam Open, I sat in the front row, watching a 16-year-old boy named Tran Hoang Nam play against a Taiwanese world top 50 player. He lost 0-2, but the second set was a narrow 19-21. What is worth noting is not the result - but how the young player handled difficult shots: retreating to the backcourt at the right moment, cross-handed smash at a 35-degree angle, and especially the ability to analyze the opponent after 4-5 shots - a skill that, according to Coach Kim, was previously only found in Korean players aged 22 and above. This skill did not come naturally. It came from a training program that BKA transferred to the Vietnam Badminton Federation: a 4K video match analysis system combined with specialized software developed by a Korean company. Previously, young Vietnamese players typically only watched replays on their phones, with un-guaranteed quality and speed. Now, every training session has 2-3 cameras recording at different angles, and coaches can pause at each frame to analyze racket angles. This is not the most expensive equipment in the world, but it is the most suitable for our conditions - and that is the key point that many people overlook when looking at this cooperation. However, the hidden part - the harder-to-see part - is the change in training culture. I followed the training of M. and her 7 teammates from 5 a.m. The athletes train in groups of 3, taking turns resting 5 minutes between high-intensity drills - a principle that Korean coaches call "smart interval," designed to develop both endurance and recovery ability. Previously, the athletes often trained continuously until exhaustion - a method I witnessed at many youth training centers in Vietnam during 2026-2026, and saw more than a few tears fall on the training floor. Especially, what surprised me most was how the Korean coaches treated the young players. In an internal meeting I was allowed to attend, Coach Kim Jin-woo said: "We do not train robots. We train people who can make their own decisions on court." This sentence sounds simple, but it represents a major cultural shift: from a coach-centered model to an athlete-centered model. The athletes are consulted on tactics, allowed to try different options in training, and most importantly - allowed to lose without fear of punishment. I witnessed a specific moment illustrating this. In an internal practice match, a 13-year-old boy lost and started crying. Coach Kim did not scold him, did not punish him with running, but sat down next to him and asked: "Where do you think you went wrong?" The boy answered, Coach Kim nodded, then said: "Then tonight you will practice that shot for 30 minutes. Not because you were wrong, but because you want to be better." That sentence made me think of how I handled the criticism on live broadcast in 2026 - that sometimes kindness is not silence, but giving people space to stand up on their own. Based on my experience following matches in Vietnam and Korea over the past 8 years, I have noticed a pattern: the most successful young players are not those with the most perfect technique at age 16, but those who know how to stand up on their own after failure. Nguyen Thuy Linh, Vietnam's current number 1 female player, once lost 4 consecutive matches at the 2026 US Open before reaching the semifinals of the French Open the same year. She shared in a 2026 interview: "I learned that losing is not the end - losing is just a lesson that has not been read carefully." But not everything is perfect. I have witnessed training sessions extending to 9 p.m., with intensity so high that some athletes showed signs of exhaustion. An in-house coach - who did not want to be named - shared with me: "We require the athletes to train 6 hours/day, sometimes 8 hours. The pressure from Korea is very great, but we know that if we do not keep up, the athletes will be left behind." This harsh truth is something that articles about Vietnamese badminton often avoid. I asked Coach Kim about this. He was silent for a long time before answering: "This is a problem that even Korea has not solved. Athletes aged 14-16 in Korea also train 6-8 hours/day, and we also have athletes who experience burnout. The difference is that in Korea, the sports medicine system is stronger, there are sports psychologists in every center. In Vietnam, the athletes have to manage on their own." This is a truth that, in my opinion, few want to speak out: Vietnam's sports medicine system has not kept pace with the development of high-performance sports. According to data from the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, by the end of 2026, the entire country had only 47 sports medicine doctors, concentrated mainly at the national teams and some major training centers. Meanwhile, Korea has more than 1,200 doctors in the same specialty, with a density of 1 doctor/450 professional athletes. This number is not for comparison, but to point out a structural gap that we need to acknowledge. Another key point I want to mention is the selection method. Previously, young players were selected for provincial/city teams mainly based on achievements at youth tournaments - a method that, according to Coach Park Sung-han, only identified 30-40% of true potential. The new model introduced by BKA introduces the concept of "multi-dimensional assessment" - combining competition results with physical fitness tests, psychology, and recovery ability. In the September 2026 selection at Bac Ninh, 8 of the 24 athletes selected for the special monitoring list were athletes who had never won a national youth championship - a figure that surprised many people. I spoke with one of those athletes - a 15-year-old girl named P.T., who had never been in the top 10 of the national youth championships but had the highest post-training cardiac muscle recovery index in the group. P.T. shared: "I did not know I had any potential until I was tested here. Before, I only knew that I often lost at tournaments, but I did not know why." That sentence reminded me of the words of a veteran coach I interviewed in 2026: "We are training the athletes to win youth championships, not to prepare them for the World Tour." Another reality that few mention is the role of parents. I met more than a few fathers and mothers at the Bac Ninh Center - people who woke up at 4 a.m., cooked rice for their children, took them to the training court, then went home to work. A mother - Ms. Ha, 42 years old, from Bac Giang - told me: "I do not understand anything about badminton tactics. I only know that my child loves it, and I want my child to have the opportunity I never had." That sentence made me pause for a long time. Because behind every young player is a family betting their future on something they cannot fully control. Badminton is not just sport. For many Vietnamese families, it is the way out of poverty, the hope for a different future for their children. And precisely because of that, the pressure on the athletes is immense - much greater than the pressure that a young Korean player must bear. In Korea, even when they fail, the athletes still have a good public education system to return to. In Vietnam, many athletes have dropped out of school from grade 9 or grade 10 to focus on training. That is a trade-off that no one dares to say outright. I asked Mr. Nguyen Trong Hy - Deputy Director General of the General Department of Sports Administration - about this at a conference in Hanoi in November 2026. He admitted: "We are building a dual training program - combining high-performance sports with general education. But this program takes time, and time is something the athletes do not have much of." That straightforward answer made me think for many days afterwards. Another point I want to share is how Koreans are looking at themselves through this cooperation process. Coach Kim Jin-woo once shared with me in a private conversation: "I came here not to teach. I came here to learn. You have something that we are gradually losing in Korea - that is patience. The athletes here endure pressure better than the athletes in Korea, perhaps because they are used to waiting from a young age." That sentence made me think of something that articles often overlook: in sports cooperation relationships, it is not always one side teaching and one side learning. Sometimes, the side considered weaker has lessons that the stronger side needs. And acknowledging that - that we have our own values worth recognizing - is something that Vietnamese sports needs to do more often. In that context, I want to ask a question that perhaps few dare to ask: are we rushing to conclude about the maturity of a generation? The achievements of Nguyen Thuy Linh, of Le Duc Phat, of the young athletes at the Bac Ninh Center are very encouraging. But achievement is not everything. Behind every achievement is a process - and that process is sometimes more painful than what we see on the scoreboard. I witnessed a late evening at the Bac Ninh Center. M., the 14-year-old girl I had been following since morning, was still practicing alone on the court. She did not know I was watching from the adjacent room. She was simply practicing - no one forced her, no one supervised. That was the moment I believe Vietnamese badminton is truly changing - not because we have better equipment, but because the athletes are starting to practice on their own because they want to, not because they have to. But at the same time, I also witnessed another scene - a 12-year-old boy sitting and crying in the corner of the court because he was scolded by the coach for a bad shot. That is the truth we cannot deny: the change is happening unevenly, and there are still dark spots that we need to acknowledge in order to change. According to a report from the Vietnam Badminton Federation, the youth training budget in 2026 is expected to increase by 35% compared to 2026 - equivalent to 47 billion VND. This is a significant figure, but there is still a large gap compared to Korea (approximately 380 billion VND for the same category). However, more important than the figure is how we use those resources. A veteran coach - who has trained many national-level players - shared with me: "Money is not the biggest problem. The biggest problem is that we do not yet have a clear effectiveness evaluation system. We are investing without knowing where investment will yield the best results." That sentence reminded me of a lesson I learned from Korea 8 years ago. In Korea, every training center must submit detailed quarterly reports on the rate of young athletes promoted to the national team, injury rate, dropout rate, and psychological indicators. If a center has a dropout rate above 20% over 3 consecutive years, that center will have its funding suspended. That is a monitoring mechanism that Vietnam does not yet have. One more thing I want to share is about the young players I met while writing this article. I got to know a 13-year-old boy named Q.A., from a poor district of Ha Giang province. He came down to Hanoi to train at age 11, lives in the center's dormitory, and only goes home twice a year. Q.A. told me: "I want to be like sister Thuy Linh in the future. I want to compete abroad." That simple sentence is the motivation of an entire system - and also the burden we are placing on the shoulders of these athletes. I have written a lot about badminton, but rarely about athletes like Q.A. Because I am afraid that my pen will place more burden on the shoulders of these athletes. The stadium was heartbreakingly empty, but the midnight phone call from Busan still echoes in me - and here, in Vietnam, the midnight call from athletes like Q.A. echoes no less. Are we listening? Back at the Bac Ninh Center. In the last training session I was allowed to attend, Coach Kim Jin-woo gathered all 30 athletes in the youth team. He said: "You do not train for me, do not train for the Federation, do not train for your parents. You train for yourselves. And you must decide where you want to go." That sentence was simple but changed how I think about youth sports training. I apologized on live broadcast in 2026, but it took many years after that to apologize to myself - that I had been too hasty in giving judgments. That lesson taught me that, in sports as in life, we need to give young people space to grow up on their own - and that space is sometimes very small, but extremely precious. When I left the Bac Ninh Center late in the afternoon, M. - the 14-year-old girl I had been following since morning - stood at the gate waving goodbye. She said nothing, just smiled. I do not know who she will become in the next 10 years. But I know that, at age 14, she has an opportunity that many young Vietnamese players before her did not have - to train in a systematic manner, to be treated as human beings rather than as tools, and to be allowed to dream about a future beyond the national youth championship. Are we rushing to conclude about the maturity of a generation? I ask that question not to have an immediate answer, but for us to think together. Because the maturity of a generation of young players is not the result of a cooperation program, but the journey of an entire society - from family, school, to the medical system and competitive environment. And that journey is still in its early chapters. There is one small detail I want to share at the end of this article. In my last meeting with Coach Kim Jin-woo before I left Bac Ninh, he gave me a photo taken in 2026 - of a 12-year-old boy training at a center in Busan, standing next to him when he was young. That boy is now 20 years old and is a world top 50 player. "Ten years," he said, "is the time needed for a child to become a world-class athlete. And the athletes in Vietnam are in the second year of that journey." That sentence is a reminder for me, and perhaps for all of us: patience is what Vietnamese sports needs more than ever. When the scoreboard falls silent, my heart begins to know how to listen - and what I heard from the Bac Ninh Center is the sound of shuttlecocks still ringing steadily from 5 a.m., of children who have never been promised anything, except the opportunity to explore their own limits. That is perhaps the most beautiful image I carry from this trip.