Vietnamese Badminton Star
Takes Manitoba By Storm
By Scott Taylor
Thien Vo’s family believed their
son just might have a better
opportunity in Canada. So in
January of 2015, they pulled him
out of his special sports school in
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam and
moved him to Winnipeg.
And it sure hasn’t taken long
for the 17-year-old Grade 12
student at Dakota Collegiate to
become the talk of Canadian
badminton.
“He’s an athlete,” said
Archie Chawla, the badminton
professional at the Winnipeg
Winter Club and along with son
Sean Chawla, is one of Thien
Vo’s two coaches. “He’s very
grounded. He’s coachable. He
has some things he likes to do
and it will probably be hard for
us to change those things, but
for the most part, if you tell him
something, he’ll try it.
“The thing you notice about
him, though, is that he works
incredibly hard. He’s here six
nights a week. And he’ll play
anybody. Yeah, he’s head and
shoulders better than everybody
else, at least around here, but if I
ask him to play against any of our
other players, he’ll jump right
into it. He’s a good kid.”
Although Archie, Sean and the
other players at the Winter Club
knew how good Vo was, it wasn’t
until he exploded onto the scene
in Saskatoon in early October
that people began to take notice.
A former member of the
Vietnamese National Junior
Team, he went west to play in
his first tournament, the 2015
Yonex Prairie Junior Elite. Archie
Chawla just laughs at what
happened.
“He went out there
10 / sportslife
and sleepwalked to the
championship,” Chawla said.
“He didn’t lose a set and there
were some very good young
players, some of the best juniors
in Western Canada wer there.
Then he came back here three
weeks later and won a Senior
Tournament.
“But what was really interesting
is that in both events, they had
no idea who he was. He hadn’t
competed enough to be seeded
so he was just thrown into the
tournament. Well, now that
he’s won a junior and a senior
tournament in three weeks and
both of them were national
ranking events, he’ll be seeded
next time.”
Thien Vo is in the process of
taking a huge step. He began
playing badminton at age
seven in Ho Chi Minh City and
immediately took to the game.
He has being playing at a special
sports school his entire life, but
at 17, his parents realized there
was an opportunity for their son
to go to Canada to play and off he
went. His English still isn’t great,
but he’s getting better. He’s even
starting to get comfortable with
interviews.
“Next year, my family will
move here forever,” he said.
“Badminton is a much bigger
sport in my country. I went to
a sports school. We did more
sports than school. It wasn’t a
normal school. Just for athletes.
Here I do more studying than
sports. It’s very different.
“I came to Canada because my
family hoped that if I came here
I would have a better life. I do
hope I can do better in Canada
than in my country. I think that