The Pencak silatteam contributed three out of the seven gold medals, thanks to LeSi Kien (men’s 85kg), Nguyen Duy Tuyen (men’s 80kg), and Nguyen Thi Yen(women’s 75kg).
16-year-old swimmer Lam QuangNhat brought a nice surprise when he finished first at 15 minutes and39.44 seconds in the men’s 1,500m freestyle event to earn gold.
Meanwhile, 53-year-old player Dang Dinh Tien, the oldest athlete ofthe Vietnamese delegation at this SEA Games, also added a gold in theone cushion carom single event to the country’s medal tally.
The shooting team went away with two gold medals with one in themale team’s 10m air pistol and the other in the men’s 10m air pistol byHoang Xuan Vinh.
On the same day, the Vietnamesewomen’s football team beat the host Myanmar 1 – 0 to rank first inGroup A and pocketed a ticket to the semifinal. Meanwhile, the men’steam earned an emphatic 5 – 0 victory against Laos , rekindling thehope of a place in the next round. Vietnam must win Malaysia inthe next match to go through to the semifinals.
Vietnamese athletes also brought home 9 silver and 6 bronze medals on Dec. 15 alone.
At the end of the day, Vietnam ranked third with 36 golds, 32silvers and 41 bronzes, following Thailand (45 golds) and Myanmar(38 golds).-VNA