In dramatic come from behind fashion, Nguyen Thi Anh Vien, 16, took the gold in the women's 200m medley swimming event at the 2013 Asian Indoor & Martial Arts Games (AIMAG) in Incheon, South Korea Sunday.

Vien got off to a slow start and trailed Zhou Yanxin of China for the first 175m of the race.

But Vien finished the final 25m with a flurry, managing to catch and surpass her Chinese rival 5m from the finish to win with a time of 2 minutes, 10.5 seconds, which set a new AIMG record.

Lam Quang Thanh, chief of the Vietnamese sports delegation, came to the pool deck to congratulate Vien and present her with a VND4 million cash bonus. "My heart almost fell out of my chest when Anh Vien took the incredible win," Thanh said.

"I've always been confident in training with a belief that my hard work would be fruitful at the regional stage, but I didn't expect I would beat the Chinese competitor at this fourth edition of AIMAG," said Vien.

"I was on top in the qualifying round but I knew the [Chinese] rival had not done her best, so I told myself to keep calm, rather than be too confident."

"Anh Vien did better than I had expected. Her sprinting was fantastic," said her coach, Dang Anh Tuan.

Another Vietnamese swimmer, Tran Duy Khoi, finished second in the men's 200m medley with a time of 2 minutes 0.24 seconds, a mere fraction of a second behind the winner, China's Mao Fellian, who finished in 1 minute 56.61 seconds.