The World U21 World Volleyball Championship 2025 is witnessing one of the most controversial cases in history: The U21 Vietnamese Women's team has been canceled and eliminated from the 1/8 round for allegations of using athletes who are not eligible for competition.
The incident broke out when the World Volleyball Federation (FIVB) suddenly issued a notice of cancellation almost the entire victory of Vietnam in the group stage, after saying that the two athletes, the captain, the hand scored the score of Dang Thi Hong and the Father Nguyen Phong Quynh, “with the same appearance as a male” and did not meet the tournament standard. One of the two athletes banned from competing in the rest of the tournament caused Vietnam to fall to the end of the table and had to play in the ranking round of 17–24.
Facing this development, Hui Ruoqi – former captain of the Chinese women's volleyball team and won the 2016 Olympic gold medal – has expressed a deep sympathy with the Vietnamese female athletes.
This 1m92 height athletes think that checking the athletes between the tournament is not a should not occur, and calling for FIVB to build a clear verification process from the beginning to ensure fairness and protect the legal rights of the athletes.
However, in the opposite direction, the U21 Serbia team coach Marijana Boricic, caused a storm of public opinion with the statement: “We are not prepared to play with the men's team.” Although not listing Vietnam, this word is considered to refer to directly and hurt the spirit of the athletes.
The Vietnam Volleyball Federation (VFV) quickly refained, confirming the entire record of the team approved by FIVB before the tournament. The sampling of blood and urine of some athletes is only for random doping, absolutely no gender test as many rumors. VFV also said that FIVB suddenly requested additional conditions that had never been applied before, resulting in a decision to cancel the results.
VFV has hired a lawyer to conduct appeals, with the goal of protecting the honor and legitimate competition of Vietnamese women's U21 athletes against the world volleyball management agency.