After Grandmaster Nguyen Loc, the founding father of the Vietnamese martial art known as Vovinam (Viet Vo Dao), passed away in 1960, his mantle passed to Le Sang from the northern province of Thanh Hoa.
The ninety year old martial arts instructor further developed the art and oversaw its growth into other part of the world.
Grandmaster Nguyen Loc combined Vietnamese traditional martial arts with others to create Vovinam, keeping true to the principle that learning the skills will benefit the practitioner’s health and help her/him in self-defense, says Le Sang.
The first Vovinam class was opened in Hanoi in 1940. Later in 1954, Grandmaster Nguyen Loc moved to the South to spread this art there. In 1967, Vovinam came to be called Vovinam-Viet Vo Dao.
Le Quoc An, Chairman of the Vietnam Natioal Textile Garment Group (Vinatex) as well as the Vovinam Federation, and Dang Thanh Tam, Chairman of Saigon Investment Group (SIG), said that people learn martial arts to develop the equilibrium, precision and sharpness that are indispensable qualities to succeed in any field.
At first, the martial art was introduced to foreign countries through overseas students in European countries like France, Germany and Italy.
Then, first through the efforts of Professor Hoang Phan and later that of others, Vovinam expanded to African countries like Algeria, Burkina, Faso, Senegal and Morocco. It has since spread to many other countries including India.
“To promote and develop Vovinam in foreign countries, we should improve the technical aspects of its postures, said An.
“When I visited a Spanish student, I moved to tears when his child showed the S-shaped land of Vietnam on the map and folded her arms and said hello to me like a Vietnamese child,” said martial arts instructor Nguyen Van Chieu.
Chieu has made outstanding contributions to developing Vovinam over the last 30 years including promoting the martial art in Asian and European countries.
