Vietnam's first medal at ASIAD 20: Teqball makes a historic breakthrough

The media bubble has burst, but the sound of the burst is faint. Vietnam’s first medal at ASIAD 20 did not come from karate, judo or swimming, but from teqball – a sport that, before this tournament, most Vietnamese fans had never heard of. Nguyen Hoang Minh Tan and Trinh Gia Nghi beat India’s pair of Dsouza Quimcy Joaquim and Beg Mohamed Anas Imran 2-0 in the mixed doubles bronze medal match, officially opening Vietnam’s medal account at the Asian Games in Japan. Teqball is a hybrid of football and table tennis. Athletes play on a curved table, using feet, head and chest to control the ball and pass it over the net. Each team is allowed a maximum of three touches before returning the ball. There are no shoulder challenges, no tackles, no 90-minute physical race – the only things that matter are individual technique, reflexes and timing between the two players. This sport appeared at ASIAD 20 for the first time. For Vietnam, it was almost unknown territory. Yet Minh Tan and Gia Nghi turned that unknown land into the starting point of a medal journey. What caught my attention in the bronze medal match was not the 2-0 scoreline, but the way the Vietnamese pair handled two-player situations. Doubles teqball is completely different from singles. One player can be brilliant, but if the other cannot read the intention, the rally collapses after two touches. Minh Tan often feeds the ball with the outside of his left foot into Gia Nghi’s favoured side, and Gia Nghi returns it with her heel to keep the rhythm. These small details do not appear in official statistics, but they show a pair who have trained long enough to understand each other’s positions on the table. Experts often treat teqball as entertainment. I see it as a high-speed decision-making system. In football, a player has two to three seconds to observe before receiving the ball. In teqball, that time is compressed to under one second. The ball bounces on the curved surface, changes spin, and if two athletes are not breathing in the same rhythm, the point slips away. Data explains the past, emotion predicts the future. The match against India showed that the Vietnamese pair possess both technique and rare composure for a new sport. They did not try to score with reckless swings; they extended the rally, forced opponents to move more and waited for mistakes. Based on my experience watching teqball at small tournaments in Europe, I notice that top teams do not choose players with the strongest shots, but players who can make decisions under extreme time pressure. Minh Tan and Gia Nghi belong to that second group. They rarely attempt risky strikes from their own half. Instead, they use the first movement to settle the ball in a safe area, then accelerate. This style is not flashy, but it offers stability – exactly what any team needs at a long Asian Games. The achievement of Minh Tan and Gia Nghi becomes even more valuable next to the defeat of Ba Truong Giang and Le Anh Khoa in the men’s doubles bronze medal match on the morning of September 20. Same team, same sport, but the two pairs went in opposite directions. While the mixed pair stayed in control, the men’s pair made repeated errors in high balls and allowed Iraq to exploit the space between them. Teqball does not forgive inconsistency. One point lost through a loose pass can change the whole match. The Japanese are not afraid of losing; they are afraid of losing without learning anything. That is why teqball was included at ASIAD 20 in Japan, and that is also the message I want to send to Vietnamese experts. This bronze medal is worth celebrating, but it only matters if we understand how it arrived. It came from focused investment in a new sport, from choosing the right people, the right pair, and giving them time to train together. There is no magic formula here. There is a process, and that process is beginning to deliver. While teqball surprised everyone, karate remained a familiar anchor for Vietnamese sport at the continental arena. Bui Ngoc Nhi won a bronze medal in the women’s individual kata after an emotional day. She lost to Japan’s Ono Maho 0-5 in the opening match, then beat South Korea’s Choi Haeun 5-0 and Singapore’s Leong Wai Yee Shannon 4-1. The notable detail is how Ngoc Nhi stood up after a blank defeat. Many young martial artists would collapse mentally after a 0-5 score against the host nation’s athlete. Ngoc Nhi did not do that. She returned, tightened every movement, and turned disappointment into fuel for the next two matches. Ngoc Nhi’s performance was not accidental. She had impressed at SEA Games 33 and at Asian youth tournaments before stepping onto the Asian Games stage. But I want to underline one detail: she still has a chance to win more medals. Ngoc Nhi and her teammates will face Nepal in the women’s team kata quarter-finals on September 22. If she keeps the current emotional flow, this bronze could be just the beginning. In the medal table, China took the lead after nearly half a day of competition with 2 golds, 4 silvers and 1 bronze. Lin Xinyu brought China its first gold in the women’s triathlon. Japan ranked second with 2 golds and 3 bronzes. Macao, South Korea and Kazakhstan each had 1 gold, standing from third to fifth. Vietnam temporarily ranked ninth with 2 bronzes. The two medals have the same colour, but one came from a new sport and one from a traditional martial art – that is a miniature portrait of Vietnamese sport at the moment. I could be wrong, but I think the media is paying this teqball bronze medal attention that is not yet proportional to its real potential. If we stop at celebrating, we will miss the bigger story: teqball is a low-cost sport, does not require a huge stadium system, fits Vietnam’s conditions, and can be developed in both rural and urban areas. While football becomes more expensive, teqball opens another path. The question is not how many medals we have, but whether we are brave enough to build a training system for a sport that has never been a priority. The loss of Ba Truong Giang and Le Anh Khoa right after Minh Tan and Gia Nghi’s medal shows how thin the line is between a medal and nothing in teqball. One morning can bring two medals; another morning can bring two regrets. We do not remember matches, we remember the moment they break. The moment the ball touched Iraq’s netting and fell down is the moment the Vietnam teqball team should remember, not to dwell on it, but to understand that at the continental level, every small detail decides everything. Today’s heresy is tomorrow’s orthodoxy. Teqball was once considered a sideshow, but once it appeared in the Asian Games programme, it became an official sport. Vietnam just made its first mark in this discipline, but the bronze medal will quickly be forgotten without the next steps. I bet that within the next three years, teqball will become one of the most invested sports in Vietnam. I will return to check this prediction at ASIAD 21. If there are no more medals from this sport, I will publicly admit I was wrong.