Vietnam won its very first Olympic medal in 2000 in what event?

Vietnam won its very first Olympic medal in 2000 in taekwondo. Trần Hiếu Ngân earned the silver medal in the women’s 57-kilogram division at the Sydney Games.

Her achievement came when taekwondo was making its official Olympic debut. The martial art had appeared as a demonstration sport at Seoul in 1988 and Barcelona in 1992, but medals officially counted for the first time in Sydney.

Ngân won three bouts to reach the final, defeating athletes from Trinidad and Tobago, the Philippines, and the Netherlands. She lost the gold-medal match to South Korea’s Jung Jae-eun, but her silver made her Vietnam’s first Olympic medalist. Vietnam had competed at earlier Games, including under different political names, without winning a medal.

A common mix-up is confusing Vietnam’s first Olympic medal with its first Olympic gold. The country’s first gold came much later, when shooter Hoàng Xuân Vinh won the men’s 10-metre air pistol event at Rio 2016.