Two Asiad 20 Bronzes: Teqball, Karate and the Rhythm of Forgotten Puzzle Pieces

On the morning of September 20, a 2-0 scoreline closed out the bronze-medal match of the mixed doubles Teqball event at Asiad 20. The pair of Nguyen Hoang Minh Tan and Trinh Gia Nghi defeated India's Dsouza Quimcy Joaquim and Beg Mohamed Anas Imran. Vietnam's sports delegation had its first bronze of this edition of the Games, and it came from a sport appearing in the official competition programme for the very first time.

I sat in front of the screen, pen in hand, logging every rhythm of ball contact. Not out of distrust for the referees. It was because of an old lesson that has settled into the way I work: the official scoreboard never tells the whole story. A 0.2-second discrepancy years ago taught me to trust my own eyes. A bronze line in the medal table says nothing about how many fractions of a second two athletes kept the ball airborne, or whether the decisive touch was played with the inside or the outside of the foot.

Teqball blends elements of football and table tennis on a curved table. In doubles, individual technique is not enough to win. You have to count the moments when two bodies move as a single unit. And that unit, when it falls out of rhythm, falls apart very quickly. That is why I call Teqball a sport of paired reflexes, where the error does not sit in one person's foot but in the distance between two people.

A young sport on a continental stage

Teqball was created in Hungary in 2026. At Asiad 20, it officially entered the competition programme. In Vietnam, the number of Teqball players can be counted on the fingers of one hand. A curved, arched table, a ball, and a rule banning contact with the hands or arms. It sounds simple. But to keep the ball on that curved surface, the body must constantly adjust its centre of gravity, while the brain must calculate the bounce trajectory in advance.

I once stood beside a Teqball table in Hanoi. Beginners usually strike the ball with the whole sole, the ball bounces off-line, and the point is lost. Professionals use the inside of the foot, the outside, the heel, the knee, the chest. They turn the body into a multi-point contact system. The body is a blackboard a coach never finishes reading.

In the bronze-medal match, Minh Tan and Gia Nghi controlled the tempo from the opening rallies. The 2-0 scoreline did not reflect technical dominance but stability. The Indian opponents produced finer rallies, yet those fine rallies arrived at unnecessary moments. In Teqball, a beautiful finish at 9-9 is worth something entirely different from the same finish at 3-9. The difference lies in choosing the right moment.

What caught my attention about this pair was how they divided space. In mixed doubles, the physical limits of the two players differ, so the division of labour cannot rest on strength. It has to rest on movement trajectory. Gia Nghi tended to drop behind the table to handle high balls, while Minh Tan pressed close to the edge to block short balls. The two played as if sharing one common space, neither encroaching on the other's zone. When they swapped roles mid-match, the Indian pair lost its tracking anchor.

A bronze in a sport newly added to the Asiad means something different from a bronze in a traditional sport. It is the result of deciding to take part early, not merely of talent. I once counted every rally of Iceland's match and suddenly saw an entire world. Here it is the same. The smallest numbers sometimes open the largest doors.

A narrow miss in the men's doubles

Right after the mixed doubles bronze, Vietnam's Teqball team missed a chance for another medal. Ba Truong Giang and Le Anh Khoa lost to the Iraqi pair in the men's doubles bronze-medal match on the morning of September 20. One more medal had been very close.

I do not want to turn this defeat into a lament. A defeat is only worth something if it is written down into a takeaway. Giang and Khoa lost because the Iraqi pair held an advantage in reach and reflex speed at short range. In men's doubles, the distance between the two players must match precisely, because the curved table does not allow anyone to retreat too deep. One extra step, one wrong angle, and the ball travels into a dead corner.

In Teqball, you cannot compensate for mistakes with physical stamina. There is no extra time, no stoppage time. The ball touching the ground means losing the point. That brings the sport closer to table tennis than to football, even though it was born from football inspiration. And that is also why it is harsh on those used to relying on endurance.

Karate: a run of three matches and one kata

Also on the morning of September 20, in Karate, Bui Ngoc Nhi won bronze in the women's individual kata event. Her path went through three matches.

In the opening match, Ngoc Nhi lost to host athlete Ono Maho of Japan 0-5. A heavy defeat. But she then beat Choi Haeun of South Korea 5-0 and Leong Wai Yee Shannon of Singapore 4-1 to claim the bronze.

In kata, the score does not measure the force of a strike. Judges assess technique, rhythm and focus. A kata loses points when the breathing is off, when the gaze wavers, when the centre of gravity fails to drop at the right moment. From 0-5 in the first match to 5-0 in the second, Ngoc Nhi adjusted not her movements but her rhythm. That is the kind of adjustment no camera can record.

I once sat through a kata training session with young fighters in Hanoi. The coach did not count strikes. He counted breaths. He said a proper kata is one where the viewer feels the power even in the moment the fighter stands still. A tenth of a second between two strikes is enough to lose points. Outsiders on the floor see only limbs moving. Those inside see an entire structure of time being built up and then dismantled.

Ngoc Nhi has already made her mark at SEA Games 33 and at Asian youth tournaments. At Asiad 20, she still has a chance for another medal when she and her teammates enter the women's team kata quarter-finals against Nepal on September 22. That quarter-final will be a different test: from individual rhythm to collective rhythm. In team kata, the fighters must execute their strikes at the same instant. Uniformity comes not from who is best, but from who accepts synchronising with the slower one. A beautiful team kata is one where the viewer's eye cannot find the person setting the rhythm.

A counterintuitive angle: two bronzes and the story of depth versus breadth

Looking at the medal table after nearly half a day of competition, China led with 2 golds, 4 silvers and 1 bronze. Athlete Lin Xinyu in the women's triathlon delivered China's first gold at Asiad 20. Host Japan ranked second with 2 golds and 3 bronzes. Macao, South Korea and Kazakhstan each had 1 gold, ranking third to fifth respectively. Vietnam's delegation sat ninth with 2 bronzes.

One can read that table and see a large gap. But the gap does not lie in Vietnam lacking good athletes. It lies in how resources are allocated. China concentrates its force on sports with large medal counts such as swimming, athletics and gymnastics. Smaller delegations have to choose another path: investing in new, less competitive sports, where a bronze can come from early preparation.

Teqball is the clearest example. When the sport first entered the Asiad, the big delegations had not yet built training systems. Vietnam had an opening. Two bronzes in one morning is not a colossal achievement, but it reveals a different logic of continental sport: those who lead in training systems hold an advantage in old sports, while those who lead in the decision to participate hold an advantage in new ones.

The counterintuitive angle here is this. Do not use total medal count as the sole yardstick of development. A delegation can rank ninth in the medal table while still sowing seeds in sports that will contribute medals ten years from now. The question is not how many medals Vietnam has. The question is which sports Vietnam is investing in before others recognise their value.

I have a habit of cross-checking three sources before using any number. But there are things that appear in no source at all: the decision of a federation to register for a new sport, the patience of a coach teaching Teqball to students on a concrete court, or the moment a young fighter accepts slowing down so a teammate can keep up. Those things are not in any statistical table. Yet they are the foundation of every medal.

What remains

My job is to find the puzzle piece the whole stadium overlooked. The bronze of Minh Tan and Gia Nghi is one such piece. Ngoc Nhi's bronze is another. They do not shine like golds, they are not replayed many times. But they mark one thing: Vietnamese sport is learning to be present in places no one is yet familiar with.

Empty stadiums in summer, a series that died young, yet I found an echo. That echo does not come from the stands. It comes from a curved table in Hungary, from a kata floor in Japan, and from a pair of feet practising synchronised strikes in some gymnasium in Vietnam, waiting for the day they step out onto the continent.

On September 22, Ngoc Nhi and her teammates face Nepal in the women's team kata quarter-finals. One more match to count. One more rhythm to trust my own eyes for.