Vietnamese Swimming and the Empty-Data Problem: Writers Must Build Their Own Information 'Refinery'

When I held a results board with a single line – 'Nguyen Van A – 53.20 – Gold Medal' – I knew I could not write a meaningful analysis. A data analyst without data is like a swimmer swimming in an empty pool. I looked around the blue lane: coaches patting athletes' shoulders, photographers jostling for photos. The crowd cheered at every good result. But for me, the sports picture was missing one vital half. I am Bui Phong, with 25 years observing Vietnamese competitive swimming, from my early days as a reporter for Thanh Nien to my role as a sports data analyst. The question I hear most from young colleagues is: 'We have rankings, technical parameters — why can't you write?' They see the athlete's name, time, and position, but not what I'm searching for: split times for every 25-meter segment, stroke rate per minute, underwater efficiency, breathing rhythm, movement trajectory. That day, the electronic board displayed only a dry number. PART 1: IF THERE IS ONLY A RESULT LINE The 2026 National Swimming Championships took place under the scorching central Vietnam sun. I sat in the stands next to veteran coaches. They could describe their athletes' strokes in detail, but when I asked for split data from electronic timing, they shook their heads. 'Our sport doesn't need that yet,' one said. Not yet? In Europe, coaching staffs treat splits as the athlete's identity. They know that finishing third in the 100m freestyle does not mean weakness if your first 50m was 0.7 seconds slower than the winner's but your second 50m was only 0.1 slower. Everything is traceable. I recall a Vietnamese swimmer praised by media as 'lightning fast' after winning a SEA Games medal. But when I reviewed the footage carefully, I saw he lost time in the start and his underwater distance was 1.5 meters shorter than the world average. If a data analyst had been given the right parameters, he could have improved by at least 0.8 seconds in a single season. But no one recorded it, because no one had the data to spot the flaw. PART 2: POOLS WITHOUT SENSORS – THE PRICE OF INCONSISTENCY I once visited a young swimmer training center in Ho Chi Minh City. The pool was beautiful, the water clean, but the underwater cameras could be counted on one hand. Touch sensors, water-pressure gauges, force-analysis models – almost non-existent. Compared to what I've seen in Australia or China, we are like a tailor without a measuring tape. A skilled artisan can estimate by eye, but cannot mass-produce. Vietnamese football has made great strides in data. Clubs like Becamex Binh Duong apply motion-tracking technology, collecting PPDA, high-speed distance. I even coined the term 'Binh Duong pressing' – a tactical brand built on numbers. Swimming, a sport where every millisecond is a decision, remains in a 'pre-industrial' era. Data in swimming is not just for post-race analysis; it is a tool for daily technique adjustments, for athletes to notice fatigue early, for sports doctors to intervene before injuries occur. Without data, everything relies on intuition. And intuition, no matter how sharp, cannot keep pace with the speed of the water. I remember interviewing a national champion. He said: 'My coach tells me to swim faster, but I don't know where I'm slow.' It is painful to hear, but it was the truth for many years. Even today, many teams still use manual stopwatches to record total times, then rely on instinct to make adjustments. Analysts like us work with so little information that we are forced to write 'emotional storytelling.' But emotion cannot be a measurement for athletes. It is like touching water and thinking you are holding it in your hand. PART 3: THE IRRATIONALITY OF SWIMMING – WHAT DATA CAN AND CANNOT DO I am not a blind worshiper of data. Swimming always has surprises. Some days a swimmer wins while their seasonal ranking is only top 15. Some world champions lose the race that matters most. Every model collapses when a human stands on the starting block. But we cannot discard measurement tools because of that. I once said: 'xG is not wrong; football is just irrational. After 2026, I learned to count the irrationality.' In swimming, I apply the same principle: data is a compass, and irrationality is the magnetic disturbance around it. Without a compass, we are merely wading in darkness. Look at how Vietnam celebrates gold medals at the SEA Games. The crowd is jubilant, newspapers publish, sponsors wave flags. But after the medal ceremony, what happens? Does the athlete have the qualities to reach the Asian level? Do we need to improve endurance or fix the start angle? Without a data system, the answers will always be 'try harder.' This advice is harmless but useless for direction. PART 4: WRITER IN A WORLD WITH NO ATTACHED FILES I switched from journalism to data analysis because of my helplessness before swimming news full of dry numbers. A sports reporter can write 'the athlete performed excellently' but cannot explain why. I became a 'Data Monk' – a hunter of anomalies, one who checks three sources before publishing. But in swimming, I often have only one source: the results sheet. When I want to verify a number, I have to call the coach, watch videos shot on cellphones, and guess. That is not analysis; it is detective work on a cleaned-up crime scene. Once I planned to write a comparison between two swimmers vying for an Olympic berth. I hoped to find underwater stats, stroke rates, power efficiency – but all I had were first-50m and second-50m times that a coach manually recorded on a crumpled piece of paper. I was frustrated, but I realized my job was not to complain, but to rebuild a process. I began collecting any data fragments available from local competitions, club scoring systems, and coaches' notes. I set my own rule: if data lacks three sources, I will only use words like 'hypothesis' or 'preliminary observation.' PART 5: THE DATA PUZZLE FOR VIETNAMESE SWIMMING IS CULTURAL – NOT JUST TECHNOLOGICAL Many say that simply buying smart equipment will cure swimming's 'blindness.' That is wrong. Equipment is only the tip of the iceberg. The submerged part is the culture of recording and sharing data. In Vietnam, clubs barely store data in an international standard. Everyone does it differently, so whenever comparison is needed, the whole system falls apart. Coaches are reluctant to share their research for fear of 'stealing.' But sports data is not private property; it is a national asset. If we know a young swimmer in Quang Binh has a wingspan of 1.85 meters while peers of the same age only reach 1.72, that is a signal for scouts. But if everything stays in dusty filing cabinets, talent detection remains a matter of luck. PART 6: THE JOURNEY STARTS WITH SMALL STROKES I could propose a list of high-tech solutions, but the most important thing is a mindset shift. Start with the simplest training centers: use phone cameras to record underwater practice, then use open-source software to count stroke rates. Log each swimmer's results after every session, broken down into 25-meter segments and intensity levels. These first pieces will be rough and fragmented, but they will form a foundation. Ten years from now, a comprehensive database will help coaches choose the right talent for each distance and phase. I still remember 2026 when I applied football's 'empty stadium' model to analyze the effect of crowds on swimming performances. I found that swimmers competing with spectators were, on average, 0.4 seconds faster than without spectators in the 100m. The number has limited meaning without global comparison, but it opens a view about training in competitive environments. If we never record performance without spectators, how can we know whether our swimmer thrives or suffers under pressure? A tiny detail like that could save many young athletes from SEA Games psychological strain. STORIES TO REMEMBER A sports writer is not just someone narrating a race. They are someone decoding why one person finishes first while another finishes second but shows better starts. When data is missing, articles only reflect the surface. I believe Vietnamese swimming is swimming in a larger pool than its achievements suggest. What they lack is not talent, but the ability to see themselves in numbers. It is time for each federation and training center to provide themselves with a 'data map.' And for journalists, instead of waiting for society to provide complete statistics, start collecting themselves. Start with stories about athletes, about how they escape the limits of intuition and enter the measurement era. Swimming will no longer be an 'emotional' sport once every second has a reason. During more than two decades of writing about sports, I have witnessed many lifelong races. But there is one race that has not started: the race to build a data system for Vietnamese swimming. This race awards no medals, only lasting value. I believe the eventual winner is not the one who touches the wall first, but the one who can look back at his pool and understand why he swam that way. Standing at the press podium that day, looking at the monotonous line '53.20 – Gold Medal' on the result board, I knew if no one did anything, every future year would repeat the same cycle. But I also saw in the distance a group of young swimmers doing laps with sports watches on their wrists, repeating the 25-meter segment over and over. Maybe they don't need me yet, but their future does. And when data starts to become part of their practice, I will appear again, with my old notebook and insight from numbers. Vietnamese swimming does not lack talent – it only lacks a precise mirror to show where it is. Once that mirror is in place, I believe generations of swimmers will not only win regionally but also be resilient enough to touch the continental stage. It is time to stop forcing ourselves to write analysis from pitiful drops of data and make room for real surgery with sharp tools. To achieve that, no one else but journalists and analysts must speak up now. The question is not when we will have data, but whether we are willing to change our perspective before data is handed to us.