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\n Vietnamese referee Tran Dinh Thinh, who collapsed during a fitness test in Hanoi and passed away at age\u202f43, August\u202f4,\u202f2025. Photo: Ngoc Le \/ Tuoi Tre
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The incident occurred on Sunday at the Hanoi Athletics Palace, where referees were undergoing a mandatory physical assessment organized by the Vietnam Football Federation (VFF) and the Vietnam Professional Football Joint Stock Company (VPF).<\/p>\n
The test consisted of a timed four-kilometer endurance run comprising ten laps. <\/p>\n
Thinh collapsed during the seventh lap, displaying signs of distress before losing consciousness.<\/p>\n
Emergency medical teams on-site administered immediate first aid and performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation before taking him to a nearby hospital.<\/p>\n
He was later transferred to Hong Ngoc Hospital in Hanoi, where he passed away at approximately 2:00 am on Monday despite intensive life-saving efforts.<\/p>\n
The exact cause of death has not yet been determined.<\/p>\n
The fitness test serves as a mandatory physical assessment under FIFA regulations, administered by VFF and VPF prior to each professional season. <\/p>\n
Referees must pass both the endurance test and technical evaluations to be eligible for match officiating in the top-flight V-League 1.<\/p>\n
The endurance run is widely recognized as one of the most strenuous physical demands placed on professional referees globally.<\/p>\n
Born in 1982, Thinh began his refereeing career in 2010. <\/p>\n
He was awarded the ‘Bronze Whistle’ in the 2023\u201324 V-League 1 season and the ‘Silver Whistle’ in the 2024\u201325 season.<\/p>\n
Outside his officiating duties, he served as a physical education teacher at a middle school in southern Dong Nai Province, his hometown.<\/p>\n
Vietnamese football previously suffered a similar loss in April 2018, when referee Duong Ngoc Tan from northern Yen Bai Province collapsed during a fitness test and died later at the age of 37.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Vietnamese referee Tran Dinh Thinh, who collapsed during a fitness test…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":47110,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[6647,102,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-47109","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fitness","8":"tag-fitness","9":"tag-health","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47109\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}