Vietnam’s martial arts ace didn’t become the best of the best overnight; it took 15 years of hard work and months of loneliness.

Vu Tra My began studying martial arts at age four and was a national champion by 10.

Now she leads the national team, but it’s been no easy row to hoe.

The long, lonely road

My began practicing the wushu martial arts in preschool after Chinese trainers selected her to become part of a special program during a visit to her Hanoi nursery school.

The trainers had been invited by Vietnamese experts to start a local wushu project as the country had no proper trainers at the time.

When My and her parents accepted the offer, they sacrificed normal childhood memories for a life of hard work that they say has paid off in numerous national and international victories for the young phenom.

My began her travels at the age of seven when she undertook intensive training in China. She lived away from her family for months at a time, training in Nanning, Anhui, Wuhan, Guilin and Beijing.

“I celebrated the Lunar New Year away from home for the first time when I was 11 years old,” Tra My said. “At the time, I was living in Nanning and my Chinese was very bad and I had few friends.

“Although the trainers looked after us and gave us banh chung (Vietnamese sticky rice cakes) and traditional soup, we still felt homesick and couldn’t sleep at all on Lunar New Year’s Eve.

“We listened to Vietnamese songs celebrating the traditional holiday and we embraced each other and cried.”

Medals

My displayed the first signs of her virtuosity by taking the bronze medal in a local changquan (long fist) competition in 1998.

She won the national Vietnamese Wushu Championship in her age category when she was 10, following in the footsteps of homegrown heroines such as regional champion Nguyen Thi My Duc and Nguyen Thuy Hien who won the gold medal at the World Wushu Championships in 1993.

My now says she’s won so many gold medals she’s lost count.

At 17, she took the gold medal at the 24th Southeast Asian Games in Thailand two years ago and took a silver medal spot at the World Wushu Championships the same year.

At the 2008 Youth Wushu Championships, My took the gold medals in the jian shu (two-edged sword) and dui lian (combat) categories, but she slipped to a bronze medal in the qiang shu (spear) category due to a controversial judge’s decision.

Know-how

My says she owes her victories in part to her Chinese trainer Chen Xu Hong, who first taught her the art.

“Hong was the one who believed in me and took me to my first wushu lessons,” My said. “She laid the foundation for my success.”

Chinese athletes are so dominant in the sport that it was not made an Olympic game last year as it is rare for an international competitor to beat a Chinese contestant for the top prize at a major event.

As such, the fact that My took a silver medal just behind her Chinese counterpart at the Ninth World Wushu Championship in China in 2007 stands as a major achievement.

Reported by Trung Hieu