Vietnam surpassed Thailand, the second highest, for the number of gold medals. Vietnam had 28 more gold medals than Thailand.

This result helped Vietnam top the SEA Games medal tally for the third time in history, after the games in 2003 and 2022. 

Notably, this was the first time that Vietnam ranked first when the games were not held in the home country.

The sports that brought the highest number of gold medals for Vietnam were diving (14 gold medals), wrestling (13), athletics (12), vovinam (7), wushu (6), gymnastics (4), taekwondo (4), and fencing (4).

Runner Nguyen Thi Oanh won the highest number of gold medals from four individual women’s running events:  1,500m, 3,000m hurdles, 5,000m and 10,000m.

The youngest athlete of the Vietnamese team who won a gold medal was golfer Le Khanh Hung, 15. This was the first time that Vietnam golf had won a gold medal. For this sport, Vietnam won one silver for the team and one bronze medal for the individual men categories.

Vietnamese athletes broke 16 SEA Games records in swimming by Pham Thanh Bao, three weightlifting records (jerk, push, general election) by Nguyen Quoc Toan in the 89kg category and Tran Minh Tri (weightlifting, 67kg category), and scuba diving category.

Notably, runner Nguyen Thi Huyen set a milestone with 13 SEA Games gold medals. The Vietnamese women's football team won its 4th gold medal in a row and its 8th at SEA Games.

As many as 61 of 136 gold medals of Vietnam are Olympic categories, accounting for 45%, including swimming (7), athletics (12), 3x3 basketball (1), boxing (2), bicycle (1), fencing (4), football (1), golf (1), gymnastics (4), judo (7), table tennis (1), taekwondo (2), weightlifting (4), wrestling (13), and breaking (1).

Dai Nam