Vietnam offers cash bounty for first Olympic gold
PHUKET - Vietnam will stump up $5,000 to any athlete who can bring home the country's first Olympic gold medal at the 2008 Beijing Games.
Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung recently approved the cash incentive, and a sweetener of $2,500 will also be on offer for an Olympic record, a senior Vietnamese sports official said.
"The government has offered $5,000 for gold, with the possibility of more money," Hoang Vinh Giang, deputy secretary-general of Vietnam's National Olympic Committee, told Reuters in a telephone interview on Thursday.
"If athletes can win money, maybe this will help us to win medals."
The communist country has won only one medal in the Games' 110-year history, despite being one of Southeast Asia's top sporting nations.
Hieu Ngan Tran became a household name in Vietnam when she won a taekwondo silver at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, but the team failed to follow up her success four years later and left Athens empty handed.
Giang said he was confident things would be different in Beijing.
"We have only ever won one Olympic medal, and we want to do better," he said. "We will try to get more medals in Beijing.
"Vietnamese sport is much better than before, we have improved a lot."
The offer of prize money is a first for Vietnam, although the $5,000 is dwarfed by the amount offered in Thailand, whose athletes netted around $500,000 for gold medals in Athens.
Vietnam has also pledged to give $1,500 to its gold medal winners at the Southeast Asian Games in Nakhon Ratchasima, Thailand, next year.
By Martin Petty - Reuters - November 2, 2006.
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