There are races we watch to see who comes first. And there are races we watch to see how far a human being can go. To me, sport for people with disabilities belongs to the second kind.
I do not write these lines as a spectator standing outside. In my part of the work at the Vietnam Paralympic Committee, I am given a hand in caring for the athletes' economic lives — to put it plainly, in securing a warm meal for the people society has grown used to calling extraordinary. The closer I stand to that work, the more I see that the word is both true and not enough.
I have come to see a paradox that cannot be seen from afar: the strongest person on the track is often the one who worries the most after the race. On the track, they are pure will — every metre a crossing of their own body's limits. But when the cheering fades, when the medal is tucked away in a drawer, they return to very worldly questions: what to live on this month, what to do when the competing ends, who will care. The stadium honours them for a few minutes. The struggle to make a living tests them for the rest of their lives.
I have come to see that the daily meal is not a small matter spoken of modestly. It is a great matter called by a small name. A person can pour their whole will into the race only when, behind them, the call of food and clothing has gone quiet. Dignity cannot live on air — it needs a ground to stand on. A meal, a roof, a job for the day the racing ends — these are the infrastructure of dignity. Without that infrastructure, every word of praise weighs nothing.
I have come to see that sport, for people with disabilities, has never been only about medals. It is the way a human being tells the world — and first of all, tells themselves — that: I remain whole where it matters most. The body may lack, but the will does not. Every training session is an affirmation of the right to live fully. And so, caring for the lives of para-athletes is not charity. It is the safekeeping of one of the most beautiful images humankind can paint of itself.
Perhaps that is why I do not see this part of my work as separate from what I am building every day. Providing welfare for a community or providing a meal for an athlete — at heart, it is one and the same: to set another person at ease at the roots, so they may be free at the crown. Settle the food, settle the shelter — and the will shall find its own wings.
At Lĩnh Nam, we often speak among ourselves of rest stops — of a system of care that looks after every traveller on the road, including the one who arrives last on the highway. People tend to watch only the car in front; but a decent road is measured by how it treats the one who finishes last. So it is with sport. So it is with society. The one who finishes last does not need pity — they need a rest stop full enough to carry them through the next leg of their journey.
I still believe that no one goes far alone. The para-athletes teach me the first half of that belief — that a human being can go farther than every limit. And the work of people like me is to hold up the second half — so that along that road, no one is left behind for the want of a meal.
I am grateful to stand in this quiet part of the work — not on the podium of glory, but behind it, where the worries need a helping hand. The glory is theirs, and they deserve it. Our part — is to keep the fire in the kitchen behind that glory always burning.
So that the one who finishes last still has a warm meal waiting.
Ho Chi Minh City, August 2026 — Nguyễn Ngọc Hải