Vanina Nguyen, or Nguyen Hoai Van Anh, 19, a Vietnamese-Bulgarian athlete, has asked to join the Vietnamese national athletics team.

Nguyen Hoai Van Anh and her medals.

Vanina Nguyen has a Vietnamese father and Bulgarian mother. She is now a member of the Titan Athletics Club in Bulgaria. She was a member of the Bulgarian athletics team.

She was born on September 24, 1990, 1.59m high, 49kg. Van Anh began practicing athletics in 2001 and has won many medals in Bulgaria and the Balkan region.

Through the Chief of the Athletics Division of the General Department of Sports and Physical Training, Duong Duc Thuy, Vanina submitted her application to join the Vietnamese national athletics squad to the agency.

Thuy said, in her application, Van Anh said she wanted to be supported by the Vietnamese sports sector as well as organisations and individuals in Vietnam to pursue her career. Van Anh is practicing at the Titan club and she is not funded to train as Bulgarian sports are entirely socialised.

The girl is living with her father, who doesn’t have a stable job. Van Anh has only been able to continue to train with the assistance of the Vietnamese community in Bulgaria. This girl specialises in short-distance races. Her best time is 11.52 seconds in the 100m. At SEA Games 2007, Vietnam’s golden runner Vu Thi Huong won the gold medal in the women’s 100m run with a time of 11.47 seconds.

Thuy said the General Department of Sports and Physical Training has asked the Vietnamese Embassy in Bulgaria to look into the girl’s case.

Van Anh was a member of the young athletics team of Bulgaria but she can join the Vietnamese athletics team because the International Athletics Federation doesn’t have strict rules on the movement of an athlete from one national team to another like in football.

If Van Anh becomes a member of the national athletics team, the team will be well strengthened ahead of the 25^th SEA Games in Laos this December.

VietNamNet/TP/VNE