Vietnam Women's Sepak Takraw and the ASIAD 20 Gold: Two Reward Tiers, One Untold Gap

On the court in Nagoya, when the final sepak takraw ball touched the floor on the opponent's side, three Vietnamese women's sepak takraw athletes stood still for a few seconds before breaking into cheers. The ASIAD 20 gold medal had come to Vietnam's women's sepak takraw team. I sat in front of a screen in Osaka, nearly four thousand kilometers away, watching that decisive play for the eleventh time and still feeling a chill down my spine.

What made me pause wasn't the final kick. It was the moment a few seconds earlier, when two athletes switched positions without needing a glance at each other, as if they were listening to a song the stands could not hear. Anyone who has followed sepak takraw knows: this sport allows no hesitation. The ball moves faster than reflexes, and a single misstep collapses the whole set. In many years of writing biographies of female athletes, I have learned one thing: the most beautiful moments are rarely in the scoreboard, but in a silent language only insiders understand.

But today's story doesn't stop at that kick. It lies in the figures released a few days later, when the rewards and preferential treatment for the three girls began to surface. And when I read that table of numbers, I noticed something perhaps even those involved had not yet seen: this gold medal isn't paid in a single sum, but in two overlapping reward tiers — with an internal gap no headline has mentioned.

Context: When a reward becomes a system

To read it correctly, one must look at the legal framework behind it. Under Government Decree No. 349/2026/ND-CP on reward and preferential treatment for athletes achieving results, an athlete winning an ASIAD gold receives 280 million VND. Beyond that one-time reward, the athlete also receives special preferential treatment of 20 million VND per month, extending from the result until the next Asian Games cycle — estimated at around 48 months.

A simple addition: 280 million VND plus 960 million VND (20 million times 48 months) yields roughly 1.24 billion VND per athlete. For a team of three, the state-level figure lands at about 3.72 billion VND — nearly 4 billion, exactly as major outlets headlined.

But that is only the first tier. Under Resolution No. 82/2026/NQ-HDND of the Hanoi People's Council, athletes on Hanoi's payroll receive an additional 140 million VND each, plus special preferential treatment of 33.5 million VND per month over the same 48-month window — equivalent to about 1.608 billion VND each. Combined, a Hanoi athlete receives roughly 1.748 billion VND from the city alone, before counting the state portion.

I spent the whole evening double-checking every calculation, because I owe my caution to an economics degree. 280 plus 960 equals 1.24. Times three equals 3.72. Hanoi: 140 plus 1,608 equals 1,748. Three athletes, plus the coach, plus peripheral sums, the true total far exceeds the "nearly 4 billion" the public is hearing.

Core analysis: The two-tier architecture and its cost

What's interesting isn't the total. It's how the system is designed.

The first tier — the state floor — was built to guarantee a minimum fairness. Every athlete winning an ASIAD gold, regardless of province, receives the same reward and the same preferential treatment from the central budget. This is a universal foundation, a promise that a national achievement will be equally recognized by the nation.

The second tier — the local top-up — operates on an entirely different logic. It depends on which province's payroll the athlete belongs to, and whether that province has its own policy. Hanoi has Resolution 82/2026. Another province may not. And here the gap appears.

Within the gold-winning team of three, two athletes are named specifically in reports — Nguyen Thi Thu Trang and Nguyen Thi Khanh Ly — both on Hanoi's payroll. The third is unnamed. That is not a reporter's oversight. It is the trace of a structure: two receive more than one and a half billion each from the city, the other may receive only the state portion. The same gold, the same podium moment, but at home, their wallets are not alike.

I am not writing this to diminish the achievement. On the contrary. Precisely because the achievement is so great, the way rewards are divided deserves closer scrutiny. In seventeen years following female athletes, from Nadeshiko League matches in Japan to sepak takraw courts in Jakarta, I've noticed a recurring pattern: rewards for women's sport are often paid with two hands — one fair, one discretionary. And the discretionary hand is always stronger.

There is another rarely noticed detail. Under regulation, the coach receives 50% of an athlete's entitlement. Coach Hoang Thi Thai Xuan, who led the team, thus receives about 0.62 billion VND from the state portion — the city portion is unclear. This 50% figure rarely appears in the press, but it says much about how codified Vietnam's system is: rewarding athletes goes hand in hand with rewarding the trainer, a mechanism binding the reward tightly to collective results. That is a design worth acknowledging, though it also raises a question: if the gold belongs to the collective, why does the money flow along payroll lines rather than being split equally across the team?

The 200 million VND "hot bonus" from the delegation also sits outside the figures above. And the sums from the federation and sponsors — per initial records — are not yet quantified. That means the final figure the three girls actually receive could be higher still, or lower than hoped, depending on whether those sums are paid as promised.

Contrarian angle: the "nearly 4 billion" headline is lying in a subtle way

This is where I want to linger a little longer.

When outlets simultaneously put the "nearly 4 billion" figure in headlines, readers assume it is the total the Vietnamese women's sepak takraw team receives. But on closer inspection, that 3.72 billion is only the state budget portion for three athletes. It excludes Hanoi's top-up, the hot bonus, federation rewards, sponsors, and especially — the coach's share.

In other words, the figure presented as a peak is actually a floor. For the two Hanoi athletes, the true total could reach nearly 3 billion VND each when both tiers are combined. For the third, it may stop at 1.24 billion plus the hot bonus. One report uses the same headline for two incomes differing by more than double. That is not an accidental slip — it is the consequence of journalism reading only the tip of the iceberg, while athletes live on the submerged part.

I witnessed something similar four years ago, when a Japanese women's futsal player won a medal and her reward table was split into five different sources, each with its own conditions. I asked her how it felt. She smiled and said: "I won't know how much I get until I get it. So I just keep training." That answer has stayed with me. It reminds me that behind every reward statistic is a human living inside the grey zone of unsettled sums.

There is one more point about time. The special preferential treatment is calculated "until the next congress." With ASIAD 20 held in 2026, that window falls at the end of the next four-year cycle. That means the real value of each 20 million or 33.5 million VND month depends on the continental calendar, on whether the Games are held on schedule, and on whether these resolutions and decrees remain in force by then. A reward that looks very large in a headline turns out to be attached to a condition no athlete controls: time.

What is changing and what remains open

I still remember August 2026, when all tournaments stopped and I sat collecting data on 27 female athletes to realize their average income at a national league had fallen by 73%. I understood then that women in sport face not only opponents on the court, but a reward system in which they have almost no voice. The ASIAD 20 gold of Vietnam's women's sepak takraw team is genuine progress. The three girls achieved what previous generations could only dream of. But the way rewards are divided still reveals a crack: when reward depends on which province you were born in, then sporting victory — the very thing that should be the most equal voice — is pulled back toward exactly what it tried to transcend.

Every sporting life is an unfinished manuscript, and the writer is only a scribe. I only hope that in that manuscript, the final lines are not written in a halved number. If the system can create a fair state floor for every athlete, why not create a fair city floor for every city? That question, I leave to those making the laws, and to those about to sit in the place of these three girls — who will read their reward table in silence, and then decide where to place it in their lives.