Nguyễn Hữu Việt (1 October 1988 – 25 March 2022)[1] was a Vietnamese swimmer who specialized in breaststroke events.[2] He won a total of five medals (three golds, one silver, and one bronze), and set numerous records for both the 100 and 200 m breaststroke at the Southeast Asian Games (2003–2009).[3][4]
Nguyễn made his first Vietnamese Olympic team as a 15-year-old for the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, where he competed in the men's 100 m breaststroke. Swimming in heat three, he rounded out a field of seven swimmers to place last and fifty-second overall by two thirds of a second (0.66) behind Estonia's Aleksander Baldin, with a time of 1:06.70.[5][6]
At the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, Nguyễn qualified again for the second time in the 100 m breaststroke. He received a FINA wild card entry by achieving his personal best of 1:03.73 from his gold medal triumph at the 2007 Southeast Asian Games in Bangkok, Thailand.[7][8] Nguyễn challenged five other swimmers in heat two, including fellow two-time Olympian Sergiu Postică of Moldova. He raced to fourth place by 0.14 of a second behind Lebanon's Wael Koubrousli in 1:06.36. Nguyễn failed to advance into the semifinals, as he placed fifty-eighth overall on the first night of the preliminaries.[9]
