The Pool Has No Room for Improvisation

On August 3, 2026, at the Tokyo Olympic sports complex, Karsten Warholm broke the world record in the men's 400-meter hurdles with a time of 45.94 seconds. I was sitting in the commentary booth, my throat raw after the final scream. But when night fell and my editor had finished assigning the piece, what kept me awake was not the hurdle track — it was the pool on another floor of the same building. Earlier that evening, in the women's 200-meter individual medley final, the gap between the gold medal and the eighth-place finisher was under two seconds. In swimming, two seconds is an entire sky. And I began to think about home.

Vietnamese swimming has one golden name: Nguyễn Thị Ánh Viên, who won gold in the women's 400-meter individual medley at the 2026 Asian Games in Incheon, writing herself into the nation's sporting history. But behind one outstanding individual lies a system that has never been built. In 2026, when I was a young reporter at Thanh Niên Báo, I covered domestic swimming meets and noticed something: we have athletes, but we do not have a foundation.

Between Vietnam and Japan — where I now live and work — the gap is not one of talent. It is structural. Japan has thousands of swimming clubs tied to schools, a year-round competition system starting at the elementary level, and coaching staff trained to international standards. Vietnam has a few major centers in Hà Nội and Hồ Chí Minh City, along with a handful of names who shine through extraordinary individual effort. Ánh Viên is the exception that proves the rule, not the rule itself.

I remember one afternoon at a youth swimming meet back home. A boy swam beautifully, but when I asked his coach about a long-term plan, he simply smiled and said: “It depends on the budget.” Those four words haunted me for years. In Japan, a ten-year-old who swims well already has a ten-year roadmap ahead — with competitions, with coaches, with scholarships. Back home, talent sometimes depends on whether the parents can afford it.

I have always asked myself what makes an elite swimmer. After years of watching footage and analyzing it, I believe the answer lies in three layers.

The first layer is technique. Swimming is a sport where efficiency is determined by the optimization of water flow, not by raw strength. A good swimmer is not the one who pushes the most water, but the one who leaves the fewest eddies behind. Analyses of propulsion in swimming show that most of the drive comes from arm-stroke technique and controlled breathing rhythm, not from muscle mass. At the Asian level, training centers in Japan, China and South Korea introduced three-dimensional video analysis into every session more than a decade ago. This is a technology race, and Vietnam entered that race late.

The second layer is physical capacity and long-term foundation. In swimming, stature and arm span decide a great deal. But more important is building a foundation from childhood. Successful systems all share one trait: a large number of children receive quality access to swimming, so that from tens of thousands a few are chosen. Vietnam, with limited resources, is forced to select early, and that causes many talents to be lost before they can reveal themselves.

The third layer — and the one I value most — is the competitive environment. Talent without worthy opponents is only a performance, not a competition. Ánh Viên once had to train abroad on a long-term basis because there was no swimmer of her caliber at home to learn from every day. That is why she rose to the continental level, but it is also why she paid the price in years spent far from home.

There is one more layer few mention: the economics of the profession. A good swimming coach in Japan can live entirely off teaching swimming, with a clear path of advancement. In Vietnam, most coaches must take second jobs, and many leave the profession before they can accumulate expertise. When investment in people does not keep pace with investment in facilities, we end up with beautiful pools but too few people who know how to teach in them.

The irony is that every time Vietnamese swimming wins a medal, we rush to find a formula. People talk about “finding the next Ánh Viên.” I think that is the wrong way to frame the question.

There is no second Ánh Viên, because Ánh Viên is not a formula — she is the result of a combination of conditions that is hard to repeat: rare individual talent, extraordinary family sacrifice, and a team that carried her onto the world stage. If we keep hunting for individual role models, we will keep neglecting the foundation. Swimming is a sport that has room for explosion in every race, but no room for improvisation in how it is built.

Another blind spot: we tend to measure success by SEA Games medals. But the regional arena conceals the truth that the gap with the world is widening. A Southeast Asian gold can be painted rosy, while the time is still several seconds off the Olympic standard. I am used to cross-checking through three sources, and numbers never lie — but a number only tells the right story if people dare to look it in the eye.

Swimming taught me something the track also taught me: no one can swim faster than the very system that produced them. If we want more Ánh Viêns, stop searching for them and start building school pools, year-round children's competitions, and coaches paid enough to live on. Every lane is a question, and Vietnam's answer is waiting underwater.