S

span class="caption" style="width: 398px;">Set: Indonesia’s vovinam team readies at a recent practice for gold in the 2011 SEA Games. JP/Willy WilsonSEA Games fever has finally taken a grip on the nation following the opening ceremony at Gelora Sriwijaya Jakabaring Sports City on the auspicious Nov. 11, 2011.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono officiated the event, and singer Agnes Monica, along with Malaysia’s Jacklyn Victor and the Philippines’ KC Conception, sang the SEA Games anthem “Together We Will Shine”.

This year’s SEA Games, which sees 542 gold medals in 44 disciplines competed for, has been rife with media coverage, with popular sports such as soccer and badminton under intense media scrutiny.

But, there has been little news on the five new sports set to make their debut in this year’s games.

The SEA Games Federation Sport and Rules Committee determined in September of 2010 that roller-skating, paragliding, bridge, wall-climbing and vovinam were going to be part of this year’s event. Of these five new sports, vovinam is perhaps the most foreign competition for the public.

“Vovinam is a traditional Vietnamese martial art, which is set to make its SEA Games debut on Nov. 14, 2011,” said Muhammad Shiddiq SP, the manager of Indonesia’s vovinam team.

It wasn’t an easy road for vovinam to be recognized by the SEA Games, Shiddiq said. Vietnam, a country that proposed vovinam for this year’s SEA Games, promised it would send trainers to neighboring countries and facilitate free-of-charge training for their athletes.

That lobbying succeeded with the decision to include vovinam in the 2011 SEA Games in May of 2010, despite vetoes from Malaysia and the Philippines.  

Following the decision, the Indonesian Sports Council (KONI) appointed Shiddiq to recruit and train potential vovinam athletes. Shiddiq, who was a pencak silat athlete in the 1970s and 1980s, didn’t really have a clue where to start.

“Vovinam is such a new thing in Indonesia and we didn’t know if anyone had ever practiced it here before. But since we’re the host [of the 2011 SEA Games], I wasn’t going to let the country down by giving up before trying,” he said.

He did his research on vovinam, and to his delight and surprise found that a group of pencak silat students in Bali had been practicing vovinam since 2008.

“I found out that the team consisted of pencak siliat students who practiced vovinam at the Dwijendra school in Bali. A group of vovinam practitioners from Vietnam had come to Bali to share their skills with the local students,” Shiddiq said.

Dwijendra, a Denpasar-based foundation that manages various educational institutions from kindergarten to university, has been cooperating with a university in Vietnam to promote vovinam.

As Shiddiq later discovered, this Balinese team had even competed in the Asian Indoor Games held in Laos in 2008, as well as the Vovinam World Championships held in Ho Chi Minh City in 2009.

“What’s amazing is that this amateur team bagged two gold medals in each competition. Not wanting to waste any more time, I journeyed to Bali to meet with the vovinam team. And by October 2010, 35 Balinese were recruited to be professionally trained,” he said.

Intense training commenced in January of 2011. The following month, the selected athletes went through a character-building program held at a military camp in Batujajar, Bandung, West Java. In July 2011, they were dispatched to Vietnam for intensive vovinam training.

The trainings paid off, as the team managed to snatch one gold, five silver and seven bronze at the second Vovinam World Championships held in Ho Chi Minh City at the end of July.

“They were pitted against more experienced vovinam athletes from 26 different countries. The result was quite an accomplishment, considering we are newcomers.

“But what really boasted our confidence was the subsequent tournament in Cambodia, in which the Indonesian team drove five gold, five silver and seven bronze home,” Shiddiq said.

After joining two Vovinam World Championships, the Indonesian vovinam team learnt that Italy, Germany and France were the strongest competitors. Closer to home, Vietnam and Laos are the ones to watch.

But considering the Indonesian team’s performance thus far, Shiddiq is positive that his SEA Games squad, comprising 18 men and nine women, will be able to drive 14 gold medals home.

At the games, vovinam will have performance art and battle categories. “We’re strong enough in the performance art category because the basic movement in vovinam is similar with our pencak silat. As for the battle category, we have been practicing leg-grappling techniques that aim at the opponent’s neck or above, as that is the most important in winning a fight,” Siddiq said.

Vovinam’s signature technique, known as Đòn Ch'n, is highly acrobatic. As Shiddiq explained, Đòn Ch'n consists of 21 leg-grappling techniques that aim at grabbing and twisting the opponent’s legs and feet.  

Although not yet a popular sport in Southeast Asia, vovinam has a cult following in Europe and America. First developed by Nguyen Loc in 1938 to equip young Vietnamese to fight French soldiers — and later the Americans — vovinam has since been brought to the West and its colonies, including Burkina Faso. Vietnamese immigrants in Europe and America have played a significant role in promoting the sport.