One Day on Three Mats: Vietnam's Ju-Jitsu, Taekwondo and Wrestling in the October 3 Asiad Diary

On the blue mat of the arena, the digital clock ticked from 10:58 to 10:59. I sat in the fourth row, close enough to hear fabric brushing against fabric as the fighters warmed up. There was no cheering. Not yet. In the Ju-Jitsu area, a female athlete retied the belt around her waist, her movements slow, as if she were tying something inside herself before stepping into the light. A few meters away, on the Taekwondo court, a young man stood at an angle, repeating a roundhouse kick into empty air, each time lowering his foot as gently as if afraid of disturbing someone.

That is the moment I always want to hold onto, before anyone has won a medal. Because afterwards, when the whistle sounds, everything becomes a score, a table, a ranking. But right now, they are still just people talking to themselves.

I have followed Vietnamese sport long enough to know that every competition day begins the same way: with silence. That silence is not empty. It is the silence of someone holding their breath before walking through a door. And in the competition diary of the Vietnamese sports delegation at the 20th Asian Games, on October 3, three such doors opened almost at once: Ju-Jitsu, Taekwondo, and freestyle wrestling.

When the Hoa Xuan stadium burst into tears, I understood that a brand is not a logo but trust. I wrote that line years ago, and today, sitting in an arena far from home, I still find it true in a different way. Trust here does not lie in any advertising board. It lies in the fact that a young woman ties her belt and steps onto the mat, knowing that behind her is a country watching through phone screens.

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Context: one calendar page, three martial arts, and the rest of the delegation

To understand what October 3 meant, we need to place it in its proper frame. This is a diary page. Not an analysis, not a commentary, but the competition schedule of the Vietnamese sports delegation for a single day at a continental games. This form of writing has a characteristic: it names many sports, gives times, and lets the reader connect the dots.

That day, most of the sports mentioned lay outside the martial arts domain. There was sepak takraw, with the women's team final between Vietnam and Thailand framed as the most anticipated event. There was golf. There was volleyball. Those are sports with their own appeal and their own audiences, and I have no intention of dragging them into this story merely to lengthen a list. But if I only wrote about martial arts on a day when martial arts occupied a small share, I would be cutting away my own context.

Because the notable thing lies here: on a day when the Vietnamese delegation spread its strength across several arenas, three martial arts appeared together. Ju-Jitsu. Taekwondo. Freestyle wrestling. Three disciplines, three rule systems, three ways of measuring victory, but sharing one structural feature.

All of them open with qualification rounds.

That is the detail I want readers to remember. Ju-Jitsu has qualifiers before the finals. Taekwondo has qualifiers. Freestyle wrestling has qualifiers. This means the competition day for Vietnamese fighters does not depend on a single bout, but on whether they survive a bracket. A morning can end very early. Or it can stretch until nightfall, if the legs hold out.

This structure matters more than its surface suggests. In weight-class combat sports, holding qualifiers and finals on the same day is a problem of stamina, hydration, weight, and psychology. It does not allow small mistakes. A misaligned block, a wrong breath, a moment of yielding the upper hand in overtime, any of these can push a fighter out of the bracket before the day has even passed noon.

I remember the France-Belgium semifinal at the 2026 World Cup. Sitting in the Moscow stands, I learned to listen with my eyes and look with my ears. That night I had planned to take tactical notes, but I abandoned the plan to observe a group of Iranian fans whose team was not in the tournament. They held Russian flags and cheered for any team that played beautifully. Since that night, I have understood that in sport, some things never appear in the statistics yet decide everything.

And on a qualification day like October 3, the thing that never appears in the statistics is preparation. People only see results. No one sees the weigh-in at six in the morning. No one sees a meal weighed to the gram. No one sees a fighter sitting in the locker room, hands trembling slightly, wondering whether he has drunk enough water.

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The core: three martial arts, three ways of reading

Now I want to go into each discipline, but not as a list. I want to read them as three different languages telling the same story about human limits.

Ju-Jitsu: the discipline placed at the center

In that day's diary page, Ju-Jitsu was given the most space among the martial arts. This is a detail worth pausing on. The editorial desk did not merely name the sport; it published exact final times: the women's 63kg category at 11:00, the men's 85kg at 11:25. For Taekwondo and wrestling, it did not do the same.

In sports journalism, publishing final times is a signal. It is like a newsroom quietly saying: this is the medal window we consider most feasible today. I do not say this as a claim about the fighters' technical strength. I say it as an observation about how a newspaper arranges attention. It is an editorial decision, not a ranking.

Three Vietnamese names appear in Ju-Jitsu: Ngo Thi Thao Van, Nguyen Thi Minh Vuong, and Nguyen Tien Trien. The women's 63kg and men's 85kg categories are mentioned. That is all the diary page gives us. No ages, no records, no opponents, no head-to-head results.

I want to be honest with readers about this, because it is a point where my profession needs care. When an article contains only names and times, the analyst is easily tempted to fill the gap with speculation. I have seen too many articles turn a name into a legend after a single afternoon. That is a habit to avoid.

What I can say with certainty about Ju-Jitsu is this: it is a relatively new sport within the continental games system compared to long-established martial arts. Its appearance on the schedule, alongside its placement at the center of the diary page, shows that this sport has taken root in the official competition system. For a young martial art, being present at a games is not only about competing. It is about institutions. About a federation having standing, having coaches, having selection, having students below.

From that angle, a Vietnamese female fighter stepping onto the Ju-Jitsu mat at 11:00 a.m. is not just a bout. It is a sign that a generation of young fighters has been trained to stand in exactly that place.

Taekwondo: the discipline with the longest road

Taekwondo appeared with three names: Le Tuan, Bac Thi Khiem, and Tran Ho Nhan Van. The categories mentioned: men's 68kg, women's 67kg, men's 80kg. The competition day opened with qualifiers.

With Taekwondo, I want to speak about a feature that outsiders often misunderstand. This is a high-impact sport, especially in the head, where points are scored on valid contact with the target. That raises a health question I think anyone interested in the sport should ask seriously. On a day when qualifiers and finals are combined, a fighter may have to compete several times within a few hours. The number of head impacts accumulates geometrically, not linearly. That is something those who only look at the final scoreboard do not see.

I think of Da Nang goalkeeper Van Cuong during the pandemic season. He once told me that period pushed him into depression, and a tape of fan cheers helped him through. That season, the stadium was empty, yet I had never heard the heartbeat of the fans so clearly. Van Cuong's story taught me that behind every fighter, every player, is a person managing something outsiders cannot see. For Taekwondo fighters, what they manage may be the fear of an impact, or the pressure of a bracket waiting ahead.

Taekwondo, from a systemic view, is one of the disciplines with the longest road among the three mentioned. It sits within the major competition program of world sport, with a weight-class system, qualifiers, and a connection to larger games. For Vietnam, a good result here is not just a medal. It is a data point for an entire cycle.

Freestyle wrestling: the discipline of those rarely named

Freestyle wrestling brought three names: Pham Nhu Duy, Nguyen Thi My Linh, and Nguyen Thi My Trang. The categories: men's 57kg, women's 53kg, women's 57kg. The day also opened with qualifiers.

Among the three, wrestling is the sport I find least courted by media. It lacks the flash of a spinning kick. It lacks the novelty of a new discipline. It has only two people on a mat, and a rulebook about who controls whom.

But precisely for that reason, wrestling speaks most about the nature of sport. In wrestling, there is no room for prolonged randomness. You can win a phase through luck, but you cannot survive a bracket on luck alone. It is the sport of the persistent, of those who accept they will be named less often, yet still train every day.

And here is where I want to speak about my borderless empathy. I cannot look at a wrestler without thinking of forgotten fates. There are people who spend their youth on a sport with no audience, no contracts, no large prize money. They compete for another reason. For a medal for a country. For a moment when their name is read aloud in an arena.

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Between the lines: weight management and the cost of a single day

There is a theme all three disciplines share, and it does not appear in the diary page as a headline. That theme is weight.

Ju-Jitsu has weight classes. Taekwondo has weight classes. Freestyle wrestling has weight classes. Three disciplines, nine fighters, and each must bring their body to a number before being allowed onto the mat.

This is an aspect of sport I think fans should understand better. Acute weight management, meaning rapid weight loss shortly before weigh-in, is one of the most serious health issues in weight-class sports. It involves water, electrolytes, and the body's ability to recover. When a fighter must both cut weight and compete several times in the same day, the pressure on the body is not only physical. It is physiological.

I once said that transfers are not numbers. They are partings written in contracts. Here, I want to extend that line. Weight is not numbers either. It is abandoned meals, mornings waking with a dry throat, moments standing on a scale hoping the number drops into place.

For the nine Vietnamese fighters on October 3, I have no data on how they cut weight. I do not know which class is natural for them and which is forced. That is an information gap I do not want to fill with speculation. But I can say this: a one-day competition structure with qualifiers and finals combined places all the physical risk into a narrow window. And in such a narrow window, whoever prepares better physiologically holds no small advantage.

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The counterintuitive angle: when the medal count hides long-term value

Now I want to enter what I consider the most important part of this article. It is a misunderstanding that comes from outside.

Every time a games takes place, the Vietnamese public is fed one thing: the medal table. That table has enormous emotional power. It gives people the feeling of counting their country's achievements. But the medal table is also a tool that blurs many things.

It blurs the difference between sports. A medal in a sport with a long road to larger games is not the same as a medal in a sport that exists only within a regional framework. On the medal table, both count as one. But in the actual development of a sporting nation, they are not the same.

Taekwondo and freestyle wrestling sit in the group with a long road. Results here can open opportunities at larger arenas, can contribute to ranking systems, can create a pathway for young athletes. Ju-Jitsu, though placed at the center of the diary page, is still a younger sport within the system. Sepak takraw, though the most anticipated event of the day, sits in a different value zone.

The fact that a newspaper placed these three side by side without distinguishing their long-term value is a choice. I do not criticize that choice, because a competition diary page has its own purpose: providing information to readers on the day. But I want readers to recognize that behind that diary page lies a larger question.

That question is: what are we investing in?

If a sporting nation is measured only by medals at a single games, it will always be drawn to sports that are easy to win. But if a sporting nation is measured by its ability to sustain and develop, it must attend to sports with long roads, sports that need years of investment, sports where results do not come immediately.

This is why I find October 3 worth reading more closely than a calendar page. In a single day, we have both sports with long roads and sports with regional value. How we read them will reveal how we understand sport.

There is another misunderstanding from outside, and it relates directly to my work. It is the habit of reading a list of names as a list of results. When a diary page prints nine fighters' names, readers easily skim past, because there is no number to hold onto. No win rate. No head-to-head record. No form.

But I have learned, from years sitting in locker rooms and stands, that a name placed before a competition time is an untold story. It may be a fighter at their first games. It may be someone who has waited years. It may be someone returning from injury. We do not know, and that very not-knowing is an invitation.

I recall 2026, when Da Nang football club stood on the brink of relegation. A record-low points total, everything falling apart. I chose not to rush into critical interviews, but to organize a small forum at a cafe by the Han River. I invited former stars, the supporters' association, and club leaders to sit together. That open dialogue helped retain three pillars of the squad and laid the foundation for the following season. Since then, I have understood that sometimes the most important thing is not to deliver a verdict, but to open a space where many voices can rise together.

The October 3 diary page is also such a space. It does not conclude. It only opens.

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What a medal does not say

I want to add one more thing about how we often misunderstand failure.

On a qualification day, most fighters will not win a medal. That is simple arithmetic. A bracket has many entrants and only one leaves with the highest medal. That means most of the day's stories are the stories of those who stop early.

And I think this is where my profession must be most careful. It is very easy to write about the winner. It is very hard to write about the loser in a way that preserves their dignity. But if I write only about winners, I have skipped most of the truth of sport.

There are matches that last 90 minutes, but stories that linger for decades. I wrote that line in a football piece, and it remains true for martial arts. A Ju-Jitsu bout may last minutes. A Taekwondo bout may last a few rounds. A wrestling bout may last minutes on the mat. But the story of the loser may linger within them for a long time.

I think of young Vietnamese fighters. They come to martial arts for many reasons. Some because of a teacher. Some because of a family. Some because of a dream of standing on a mat far from home. When they step out and stop early, that does not make their journey meaningless. It only makes that journey harder.

And here is where I want to mention something about community. One of the greatest temptations of a sports writer is to idealize the fan community. I have lived long enough to know that community is not always beautiful. There are times fans turn away. There are times they criticize excessively. There are times they call me a seller of human dignity simply because I wrote what they did not want to hear.

But that same community is also where a young fighter finds comfort after a defeat. That is what I learned from the pandemic, when stadiums closed and I helped Da Nang club's media team organize online Q&A sessions with fans three times a week. Those sessions won no medals. But they kept a community from dissolving.

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A systemic view: what a sports delegation is

From an organizational angle, October 3 gives us a clear picture of how elite sport operates.

This is a multi-sport games. That means no private promoter sells tickets per bout. No exclusive contracts. No fragmented championship belts. No cross-organizational superfights. There is a continental sports council governing, international federations managing each sport's rules, and national delegations bringing athletes.

For Vietnam, the delegation is a nationally organized collective. The fighters compete not as free individuals, but as representatives. That changes the nature of pressure. A professional fighter who loses a bout loses money. A national representative who loses a bout carries something else.

In this system, there is no buying or selling of athletes. No transfer market. No personal commercial value priced per bout. That means their motivation does not come from money. It comes from something else, and I think that something is trust.

This is why I always stress that a national amateur sporting system is a public good. Its benefit does not lie in revenue. It lies in pride, in cohesion, in a child in a distant province seeing someone like themselves on a mat and believing they too can do it.

I saw that in Da Nang, when I helped organize meetings between players and children in the neighborhood. Those children did not ask about money. They asked about how to train, how to overcome fear. And that is something a sporting nation can give away without losing anything.

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Health and human limits

I want to devote a section to health, because it is a topic sports writing often avoids.

The three martial arts on October 3 have three different risk profiles.

Ju-Jitsu and freestyle wrestling share a common risk: stress on joints and ligaments. These are sports where the body is twisted, pulled, and forced into positions it was not designed to endure for long. A knee injury in a young fighter can follow them for life.

Taekwondo has a different risk profile, related to head impacts. I do not say this to diminish the sport. I say it to remind that behind every beautiful kick is a body under pressure.

And all three share a third risk: acute weight management. This is the risk I consider most serious, because it leaves no visible wound. It happens quietly, in the days before weigh-in, in cut meals, in training sessions in a dehydrated state.

I think of what I learned during the pandemic. I learned that athletes' mental health is part of physical health, and it is most often ignored. When I heard Van Cuong's story, I understood that some injuries do not appear on a scan.

For young Vietnamese fighters competing far from home, mental risk is not small. They are in an unfamiliar environment, without family, under pressure to bring back a result. If they lose early, they must face that feeling alone. That is why I think delegations need to invest more in mental care, not only in training.

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What is moving: a link between memory and the present

I do not want this article to become a nostalgic page. I have seen too many sports articles living in the past, and I do not want to be one of them.

Memory has value only when linked to a reality in motion. And the reality in motion here is this: Vietnamese sport is at a stage where martial arts are invested in more seriously, organized more systematically, and brought into international competition more often.

The appearance of Ju-Jitsu alongside Taekwondo and freestyle wrestling on the same calendar page is a sign. It shows that Vietnamese sport no longer focuses only on a few traditional sports. It is expanding, experimenting, seeking new paths.

That raises a question about how we read sports news. When a diary page prints nine fighters' names, we can skim past, or we can stop and recognize that behind each name is a system. A family that sent a child to train in martial arts from a young age. A coach who spent years in a gym. A federation that built a pathway.

I have spent forty-two years observing this industry, and I have learned that the biggest changes rarely come from dazzling moments. They come from calendar pages. From a new sport being added to a program. From a new name appearing on a list. Those small things, added up over years, create a different sporting nation.

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What I carried away from that day

When I left the arena, it was late afternoon. Outside, a group of Vietnamese fans were taking photos together. They did not know the results of all the bouts. They only knew that today their country had people competing, and that was enough for them to be there.

I thought about what I had seen that day: three mats, nine names, and one calendar page. None of it was a complete story. But all of it was part of a larger one.

And here is what I want to leave readers, not as a conclusion but as an open thought.

Every time a Vietnamese fighter steps onto a mat, there is a question no medal table can answer. That question is: are we building a sporting nation that can stand across generations, or are we merely counting moments?

If the answer is the former, then October 3 is not just a calendar page. It is a brick.

And if I could choose one thing to carry from that day, I would choose the image of the young woman retying the belt around her waist before stepping into the light. Not because she won or lost. But because she stepped out.

In sport, as in life, stepping out is always the hardest part. The rest is just what happens afterwards.

And perhaps, after all, what we need to learn is not how to count medals, but how to listen to those who are stepping out. When the Hoa Xuan stadium burst into tears, I understood that a brand is not a logo but trust. That trust does not lie in the medal table. It lies in the fact that, on an October morning, young people retied their belts and stepped outside, for a country watching after them.