Dreaming future events

The nation's 4x400 m men's relay team is currently ranked 17th in the world with a best time of 3:19:50, nearly one second more than the 16th ranked team, Japan (3:18:77). The goal set for the team, with the July 5 deadline for Olympic qualification, is to improve their performance to reach the world’s top 16 and win a ticket to Tokyo. Another Olympic qualification for Vietnamese athletics is expected to come from an individual performance. Quach Thi Lan, a 400 m hurdles specialist, has a great opportunity to qualify for the Olympics. She is on top in Asia and ranked 19th in the world. At the 2020 National Athletics Championship, Lan beat Nguyen Thi Huyen to win the 400 m gold in 55.98 seconds. This result was very close to the Olympic standard. To reach it, she needs to shorten her time by 0.58 seconds. She has done it before at the Asian Games 2018, winning the gold in 55.30 seconds. Now would be a great time to repeat the feat. Apart from qualifying for the Olympics, Vietnamese athletes have set an ambitious goal of winning 17 to 19 gold medals in 47 categories at the SEA Games 31 that will be hosted by Vietnam. This is a tough, but not impossible goal, having done well in the previous two editions of the tournament. At the SEA Games 30, Vietnam won 16 gold medals in athletics alone. Top track and field athletes in the country have shown good form. At the athletics championship last year, SEA Games champion Nguyen Thi Oanh won four gold medals in medium distances, breaking the national record that had stood for 17 years in the women’s 10,000 m category. In the same championship, Le Tu Chinh achieved an impressive timing of 11.43 seconds in the 100 m race, bettering her SEA Games 30 gold medal time of 11.54 seconds. Younger athletes are also holding up promise for the future. Tran Van Dang surpassed his senior Duong Van Thai in the national championship to win gold in the men’s 800 m and 1,500 m races. Then there is Ngan Ngoc Nghia, who set a new national …

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Demand for top meat drives funding Demand for top meat drives funding In the midst of the rising demand for quality pork, Vietnam has witnessed growing investment in the clean meat market.  Last week, AVG Capital Partners, a private equity fund from Russia, signed an MoU with Thanh Hoa People’s Committee to develop a $1.4 billion pork processing complex in Nghi Son Economic Zone. With an area of 1,000 hectares, the complex has a designed capacity to produce five million hogs a year. It will boast 43 commercial pig farms and three hybrid pig farms, a mixed feed factory with a capacity of two million tonnes a year, as well as a slaughterhouse and processing plant with a capacity of 600,000 tonnes a year. Phong Quach, head of business development at Ipsos Strategy3 in Vietnam, said that as a general principle, any high-tech investment in agriculture is good for Vietnam. This is because the Vietnamese agricultural sector is still trying to attract more technology that can provide higher output for both the domestic and export markets. The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development has identified in its objectives for 2030 that it wants to strive for high-value added agricultural outputs rather than volume. Quach added, “When we take a closer look at different points in the value chain and investments, there are different dynamics in the competition depending on the node we review. The latest investment from AVG Capital Partners is a feed-farm-food (3F) investment encompassing the entire production chain. However, the output capacity of the processing facility is much higher than its supply, with 600,000 tonnes of processed meat against five million hogs a year.” This would suggest that there is still significant opportunity for Vietnamese farms to supply this facility. If AVG Capital Partners is looking to source hogs from Vietnamese farms, this would be a vote of confidence for local farming while epidemics still wreak havoc in the global …

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Mai Quoc Huy is neither an outstanding student nor a teacher’s favorite. However, the 16-year-old student used the skills he has learned through first-hand experience to earn first prize at the Ho Chi Minh City Informatics Competition for Youth 2018. Huy might spend most of his free time helping his father sell second-hand speakers and repairing his neighbors’ electric devices, but every now and then he finds a reason to sneak off to local bookstores and read up physics, electricity, and programming. Though he is just an ordinary student from a low-income family, his ability to remember even the smallest detail of electrical devices is a skill others can only dream of. A ninth grader who can turn bikes from manual to electric Thanks to his teacher’s proposition, Huy was chosen to represent Ban Co Middle School in District 3, Ho Chi Minh City at two municipal competitions: the Science Fair for Daily Inventions and Informatics Competition for Youth, both of which awarded him first prize for his submission: his grandfather’s old bicycle installed with a motor, throttle, and solar batteries to turn it into an electric bike Having joined the competition for the first time, Huy was funded with VND1 million (around US$43) for the project. To parents’ and neighbors’ surprise, Huy’s electric bicycle, able to reach speeds of 40kph, was awarded two first prizes and qualified for the national competition to be held in August. Now, Huy is putting the final touches on his “invention” to prepare for the upcoming event. The bicycle is not only special because it is powered by solar energy, it also has other features that most bicycles do not, mostly inspired by Huy’s own experience as a cyclist. “One time I went to visit a friend in Cho Ray Hospital and my bicycle was moved to a new spot in the gigantic parking lot. When I got home, I decided that I would equip the bike with some of the convenient features that motorbikes have, such as radio waves (RF) that can …

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