Vietnam (VIE)

While South Vietnam had competed in the Olympics between 1952 and 1972, its northern neighbor had not. But after the conclusion of the Vietnam War, a new unified National Olympic Committee was formed on 20 December 1976, which was provisionally recognized at a meeting of the IOC Executive Board in Nagoya in October 1979 and fully recognized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in time for the 1980 Olympics. Vietnam has since only missed the 1984 Olympics through boycott. It has never competed at the Olympic Winter Games. Vietnam won its first Olympic medal in 2000 at Sydney, when Trần Hiếu Ngân finished second in women’s 57 kg class taekwondo. Through 2016, it has won five Olympic medals, with two each in shooting and weightlifting and one in taekwondo.