National Wrestling Squad Enters a New Cycle: An Old Mat and an Unfunded Budget

On a weekend session at the wrestling squad's training hall, the sound of bodies hitting the mat carried heavier than the whistle. A 21-year-old athlete, call him H., sat in the corner of the room, rewrapping his knee with a roll of tape already used the week before. Three days earlier, H. had won a village wrestling festival on the outskirts of the city, taking a cash prize; that money covered his food for a month, while the squad's own nutrition allowance stayed at the basic level. Spectators record the score; I record the heartbeat of the whole arena — and in this training hall, that heartbeat follows the rhythm of expenses that have not been approved.

The 2026 Seoul Games closed on October 2, with wrestling held at the Sangmu Gymnasium in two disciplines, freestyle and Greco-Roman, run by FILA, the amateur wrestling governing body founded in 2026. Greco-Roman has been on the Olympic programme since the first modern Games in 1896; freestyle joined in 2026. Wrestling has never been foreign to this country: village festival bouts are part of many spring festivals, with prizes of cash, chickens or baskets of rice. The distance between a good wrestler on the village ground and an athlete ready to enter an Olympic qualifier is the distance of years of structured training, of sparring partners of the right level, of staff tracking weight and injury. The new cycle has opened; the preparation plan is still on paper.

A squad official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the main funding source remains the state budget, and this year that money is nearly gone. Departments that once took athletes on as employees who also trained have declined further support, citing production difficulties. On the Olympic movement's scholarship list for athletes from developing countries, no Vietnamese wrestler appears. Sponsors are blunt: they sign only after a medal at a major international event.

That logic produces a closed circle: sponsors require an international medal, an international medal requires money to compete internationally, and money to compete internationally comes only from sponsors. Each link is correct on its own; joined together, none of them will move first. Meanwhile the route to an Olympic place is still there: results at the world championships, the continental championships and the qualifiers. The route is clear; only the travel money is missing.

The first plan to be struck was a long overseas training camp. A partner country with a strong wrestling tradition was willing to take the athletes in for joint sessions, but there was no budget for airfare, food and lodging, so the trip remains a verbal understanding. Without it, the athletes mostly train among themselves at home, meaning they lack opponents in their own weight classes capable of pushing them up a level.

The hardest part to say out loud lies elsewhere. Village festival wrestling is the only income for most of these athletes, and it rewards strength and throws on muddy or dirt ground. Freestyle on the mat requires the speed to change position, chain wrestling and ground technique, none of which the village ground teaches. The festival economy keeps the wrestlers alive through precisely the skill set that makes them slower once they step onto an international mat. Ban it and you cut their livelihood; leave it and every festival season pulls them further from the Olympic path.

Based on my experience covering these matches, a wrestling squad short of sparring partners of the right level usually needs two to three years to recover, and that time cannot be shortened by any meeting. With the new cycle already underway, those years are passing in silence.

The familiar explanation — no money, no medals, so wait — hides a more awkward detail: the international competition system is working exactly as designed, with a clear qualifying route and a calendar published in advance. The failure sits in the domestic organisational layer, where there is no stable funding mechanism, and where a scholarship designed for exactly this kind of athlete goes unused. That is a paperwork problem, not something that requires waiting for a medal.

Another blind spot is worth naming: weight management. Wrestling is a sport where cutting weight by dehydration is common, and the current squad has no medical officer assigned to individual athletes. People worry more about an Olympic place than about how a 21-year-old will make his weight class.

The signal to watch over the next few months is not in any statement. It is whether the squad is entered for the continental championships, and whether the overseas camp is approved before the season starts. If both stay on paper, the question is no longer when a medal will come, but how many wrestlers will stay on this road.