Nghe An male student 'won' 2 Olympic Gold Medals in the same year

Nguyen The Quan (grade 12A, Phan Boi Chau High School for the Gifted, Nghe An) is the only candidate of the Vietnamese team to win the Gold Medal at the 2025 International Physics Olympiad. This helped the Vietnamese team to be in the top 10 countries with the highest results at the 2025 IPhO. The Quan is also the candidate with the second highest practical score in the world .

With this result, in just 2025, the male student from Nghe An won both international and regional Olympic Gold Medals.

In May, The Quan won a Gold Medal at the 2025 Asia- Pacific Physics Olympiad (with the highest score of the Vietnamese delegation), helping the Vietnamese delegation rank in the top 5 countries and territories with the highest achievements. In grade 11, The Quan also won a Bronze Medal at the 2024 Asian Physics Olympiad.

Nguyen The Quan (grade 12, Phan Boi Chau High School for the Gifted, Nghe An ) won Gold Medals at both the International Physics Olympiad and the Asian Physics Olympiad in 2025. Photo: NVCC.

Sharing with VietNamNet , The Quan said he was very happy and quite surprised to be the only Vietnamese contestant to win a Gold Medal at the International Physics Olympiad.

Ms. Cao Thi Lan Thanh, Principal of Phan Boi Chau High School for the Gifted, shared that The Quan's achievements are a source of joy and pride for teachers, family and the education sector of Nghe An province. However, Ms. Thanh said that this result is not too surprising for those who follow and accompany him.

“Quan always shows his effort and passion, especially never giving up his desire to conquer the peaks. This result is completely worthy of his efforts. Quan's results will be a source of inspiration for students studying at the school about determination and passion,” said Ms. Thanh.

The proof is that although he was given special permission to compete in the national excellent student selection round in grade 12 because he won a Bronze Medal at the Asian Physics Olympiad in grade 11, he still participated in the competition and won First Prize. Not only that, he was also the student with the highest score in the national team selection round for the regional and international Olympiads before winning two Gold Medals.

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Nguyen The Quan with principal Cao Thi Lan Thanh, homeroom teacher Le Xuan Bao (third row, right cover) and the two heads and deputy heads of the Vietnamese delegation to the 2025 International Physics Olympiad at the closing ceremony of the competition held in France. Photo: NVCC.

Originally a student majoring in Mathematics in junior high school, Quan decided to “change” to Physics to pursue his dream of entering a specialized school. The more he studied, the more he found Physics truly fascinating. This subject helped him understand more deeply about the world around him, explaining phenomena that occur in life. Physics also taught him how to look at things with logical thinking, creativity and scientific curiosity. He also demonstrated his impressive ability in this subject with many outstanding achievements in grade 9 such as: First prize in Physics for excellent students at the city level, Encouragement prize at the excellent student competition at the provincial level...

More impressively, Quan affirmed his ability when he became the valedictorian of the 10th grade Physics class at Phan Boi Chau High School for the Gifted in 2022. Quan's class was also the first class that teacher Le Xuan Bao was the head teacher of the Physics class. At that time, teacher Bao had just graduated from university and had been working for 2 years.

Talking about learning methods, Quan said he emphasizes the importance of self-study. "In addition to acquiring knowledge from teachers, you need to have high determination, especially self-study," Quan shared.

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Mr. Thai Van Thanh, Director of Nghe An Department of Education and Training, met and congratulated Nguyen The Quan and the leaders of Phan Boi Chau High School for the Gifted before the male student left for the 2025 International Physics Olympiad. Photo: NVCC.

Mr. Le Xuan Bao, Quan’s homeroom teacher and Physics teacher, commented that the student is intelligent, hard-working, and passionate about Physics. “Quan has a high learning spirit and is very proactive in accessing knowledge, without needing much reminders from teachers. In addition to studying in class with assigned exercises, Quan often searches for resources online… to improve his knowledge,” said Mr. Bao.

The memory that Mr. Bao remembers most about Quan is the 2024 Asian Physics Olympiad. “In the first international exam, he was confused and saw that the exam was in English. Quan did not know that he could do the test in Vietnamese, so he wrote in English. That time, although he could solve all the questions in the exam, he could not express his ideas properly due to language limitations, which led to him not completing the test as expected and only winning a Bronze Medal. Because of that, he missed the opportunity to join the team to compete in the International Olympiad when he was in grade 11 and was very sad. At that time, I encouraged him to stand up and try to prove himself in grade 12 instead of being sad, and he finally did it,” Mr. Bao said.

With 2 Olympic Gold Medals in 2025, Quan will be admitted directly to domestic universities. He is considering studying Physics at the University of Science - Vietnam National University, Hanoi. Further, if given the opportunity, he wants to study abroad to broaden his knowledge and develop himself.

Source: https://vietnamnet.vn/nam-sinh-nghe-an-am-tron-2-huy-chuong-vang-olympic-trong-cung-1-nam-2425838.html