The N/A Report – When Vietnamese Sports Swim in Data Darkness

In a meeting room at the National Sports Training Center in Ho Chi Minh City, a colleague handed me a thick document. The cover read “In-Depth Analysis Report”. As I turned the pages, I saw the same abbreviation repeated over and over: N/A. The “not available” appeared in every section—technical, performance, competition system, world swimming landscape, governance, career, risk, public opinion, and industry impact. I flipped back and forth, thinking I had the wrong file. No. This was the final report on a prominent swimmer from the movement group. All the expert could say was: insufficient information to assess. A conclusion repeated 100 times. At that moment, I recognized a paradox: we live in the era of “numbers”, yet we fail to build a data system for our own future stars.

In high-performance sport, data is like blood for the body. At the Olympics, every swimmer has a 10-year tracking record—from stroke length to the angle of the ankle during each kick. They are measured by hundreds of sensors. In contrast, in Vietnam, many young talents are known only through their results in regional competitions. No one has recorded them swimming underwater, no data on their acceleration during turns, not even a basic biomechanical test. That is why, when a performance analyst is asked to evaluate a promising athlete, he has nothing to offer. His report becomes a blank sheet.

This article is not just about a particular athlete; it is about an entire system. Every summer, we see federations celebrate SEA Games medals. But that success hides the reality that we are still operating by inspiration. Without data, how can we know what a Vietnamese swimmer lacks to compete with Asia’s top athletes? That question, applied to the N/A report, has no answer.

The first part of the report, technical analysis, shows N/A across all criteria. No start angle, no underwater dolphin efficiency, no turn split data. Perhaps we should be surprised that a professional swimmer has so little. But in reality, most provinces have no technical evaluation system for athletes. Coaches rarely use underwater cameras. No motion-analysis software has ever been applied. So a good swimmer merely “swims by feel”. When we cannot read the technical numbers of an individual, we cannot help them correct faults.

Part 2 covers performance and data. The chart cells are empty. No gap to national record, no season-world ranking. People might say, “Look at their recent times.” But where are those times? In domestic competitions, times are recorded manually, sometimes lacking precision. No federation tracking system exists. Thus, there is no way to measure an athlete’s year-over-year development. We can see they swim faster, truly, but we don’t know how much faster. This is a serious deficiency in our nation’s sport.

Part 3 analyzes the competition system and mechanisms. The report says “insufficient information” about the status and tier of events, and conversion factors. This means domestic races are not graded by international standards, and there is no clear selection system. Many top athletes never get a chance to swim at major international events because national qualifying rounds are not based on transparent criteria. How can we build an Olympic pathway when every step in athlete selection is blurry?

Some might say we need to compete internationally more often. But these events are licensed year by year, and funding is fragile. And when a young swimmer performs well at an Asian meet, that result is not officially used as a criterion for national team recruitment. This is why the career-analysis section, part 6, is also N/A. There is no career curve, no comparison to age-related norms. We do not know if a 16-year-old is entering a growth spurt or has already peaked.

Part 4 concerns the world swimming map. The report might have intended to position the Vietnamese swimmer internationally, but it is also blank. This is not surprising, because we rarely send swimmers to Grand Prix or global World Cup events. Without data comparing them to the top of the continent, we cannot locate them. At the same time, the absence of records on nationality switches or coach transfers reflects how isolated we are from international currents.

Part 5 deals with governance and anti-doping. No cases yet? That may be good, but N/A in doping management could be a warning due to lack of funded tests and incomplete athlete location records. This is a potential legal loophole should a Vietnamese swimmer one day fall under WADA’s out-of-competition testing. The system has no one watching. This shows that the surface of medals cannot hide the weakness of the governance foundation.

Part 7 is about risk. An empty risk matrix means we have not identified competitive, injury, psychological, or even systemic threats. We have no “heat map” for weaknesses such as touch technique or ability to handle pressure in major events. Therefore, training and development planning is like driving a ship in a pitch-black night. Part 8 about public opinion and expectations is also blank. Media focuses only on winning and losing on that day; no one measures public emotion. Euphoria lasts only for the cycle of the Games. Part 9 talks about industry impact. A boost from sport usually benefits tourism, media, and sports-equipment businesses. But because there is no assessment, we cannot know whether a victory in the pool will increase the number of people taking up swimming. Investors hesitate because they lack market data. The professional swimming industry merely spins around local playgrounds.

But among those dry N/A marks, I suddenly remembered an afternoon in 2026 in Bangkok. I wrote about an Indonesian hurdler who had an “odd” technique—13 strides between hurdles instead of 14. No one had data on him. Colleagues said I was making it up. I trust intuition, but I have learned that intuition must wait for data. He broke the national record three months later. It was the same in March 2026, when I saw a Kenyan woman running the 800m on a dirt road, with no watch, no coach, not a single line of data. She appeared like a perfect N/A sign. The flame of 2026 was rekindled by an unnoticed Kenyan girl. I flew there and told her story, because sometimes blank sheets force us to look deeper.

But I want to view this report from another angle. A page full of N/A can be an extraordinary opportunity. It serves as a mirror to see our own emptiness and to begin from zero. Instead of copying Western analytical formulas, we can build a unique set of standards for Vietnamese sports. Furthermore, sometimes the silence of data is deliberate. Many federations intentionally withhold test results to conceal tactics for major events. Sports journalists need to stay alert. N/A does not necessarily mean “nothing”, it could mean “I do not want to tell you yet”. To do that, we need people who can read data and understand the language of gaps. A hurdler does not ask how high the hurdles are; they ask where the finish line is.

So what should we do? Focus on building an information system. The Olympic Committee and the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism should cooperate to establish a national athlete database. Starting from the youth development pipeline, every swimmer entering the junior national team should receive a digital profile. The profile would include anthropometric data, quarterly competition results, periodic underwater video, and sports-medicine test outcomes. After four years, we would have a large dataset. That is when similar reports can be written in meaningful words. Let us create it together so that no one has to throw up their hands like the analyst in my story.

It is time for change. Vietnamese sports cannot continue swimming in the dark. Without data, today’s medals are only next year’s luck. But Vietnamese people believe in discipline and hard work. We absolutely can start a sports data revolution. A crisis only takes away the venue, not the trajectory. Let us make it so that future analysis reports no longer have to conclude with “Insufficient information to assess”. Instead, they will tell vibrant stories of progress—stories written in numbers but soaked with sweat and pool water. And of course, I will still search for “the running line in their eyes”, even now that I am presented with a huge data warehouse. Because data cannot replace the human heart. I do not read the record boards. I read the running line in their eyes. But now, I also know how to listen to what the numbers have to say—so that we can write full-page reports, not one line after another ending with meaningless N/A.