Sprinter Lam Van Hai, 21, didn't start running until he was 18. The training budget for him and the other five Olympic athletes on his team is less than $60 a day. The team was almost smaller than six: Vietnam's Olympic Committee had trouble raising $4,000 for two plane tickets for the judo competitor and her coach. And what about their prospects? When asked if any of Vietnam's athletes might come home with a medal, Olympic delegation chief Nguyen Dinh Khoai shakes his head and breaks into a smile. "Maybe four years from now," he says. "Maybe eight."

In the arena of Olympic sports, Vietnam stands out for what it hasn't done. Unlike many of its communist peers, the country never poured money into creating lithesome gymnasts, dolphin-like swimmers or fleet-footed track stars. The former Soviet Union and East Germany used the Olympics to showcase their best and brawniest, and since the fall of communism in Europe, China has more than taken up the slack on behalf of authoritarian regimes. Even Cuba has fielded world-class teams. But Vietnam's best Olympic showing since it first entered the Games in 1952 was by a wrestler who made the quarterfinals at the 1980 Moscow competition that was boycotted by much of the West.

This time around, the competitors--two runners, two swimmers, a marksman and the judo entrant--head to Atlanta with a pragmatic approach. "We go to gain knowledge from our competitors," says Trinh Quoc Viet, 29, the son of a war veteran and perhaps Vietnam's best Olympic hope. He is competing in the free-pistol and air-pistol events and maintains he didn't learn how to shoot from his father, who fought both the French and the Americans.

"Vietnam has to restructure a whole sports program that was ignored because of other priorities," says Bruce Aitken, a Hong Kong sports promoter, who has organized marathons and surfing competitions in Vietnam. He means wars, first against French colonialists, later against the U.S.-backed Saigon government and then an invasion by Khmer Rouge-controlled Cambodia. Even after the shooting ended, sports had a low priority. And Vietnam, isolated from much of the world economically and politically, didn't participate in international meets. The first time Vietnam sent more than a token team to a major competition was the 1989 Southeast Asian Games. Vietnam, the second largest country in the region, won just 19 medals, compared with 251 captured by the champion Indonesians.

The neglect of competitive sports is dramatically evident at the National Sports Training Center No. 1, 14 km outside Hanoi, where some of the runners don't wear shoes because there aren't enough to go around. The nation's top gymnasts share a gym with the nation's top volleyballers, boxers and martial artists. There are just four Olympic-size pools for the entire country of 75 million people. Lam Van Hai, who will run the 100 m and 200 m in Atlanta, trains in Hanoi because the track in Ho Chi Minh City has a surface of sand.

The country's role as a poverty-stricken sports spectator, however, is changing. The government is building new facilities, including a training center in Ho Chi Minh City. The old facility outside Hanoi, built in 1961, houses about 130 athletes who live in relative comfort. Their dorm rooms have television, air conditioning and private baths, amenities most Vietnamese don't share. The athletes receive stipends of about $60 a month, and their meals and rooms are free. But officials don't want them to take it all for granted. A chalkboard outside the dining hall lists the food being served and how much it cost the kitchen staff to buy it. "We want to remind them how much the country does for them," said Pham Ngoc Vien, vice director of the training center. The efforts are paying off. At last year's Southeast Asian Games, Vietnam came home with 52 medals, including a second-place finish for its soccer team.

But there are few homegrown stars here. More Vietnamese know American basketball's Michael Jordan than any member of the national soccer team, let alone Olympian Vu Bich Huong. The 26-year-old hurdler from Hanoi won a gold medal at last year's Southeast Asian Games, but she competes in obscurity and otherwise sells tickets at Hanoi's stadium in exchange for time on the track.

Sprinter Hai hopes to become the first Vietnamese track star to win fame and fortune. Handsome and cocky, he knows the Olympics sometimes turn athletes into millionaires. Realistically, though, he has no chance at a medal. His best time in the 100 m is 10.50 sec., more than half a second off the likely winning pace. If Hai were miraculously to win, however, Vietnam would reward him with about $4,500. Even without a medal showing, says shooter Viet, "if I do well, I think my government will give me a good bonus." Since a contract endorsing Nike shoes is probably out of the question, Hai's plan for after the Games is to open a sporting-goods store. "People will buy things because now I am famous," he says. "The Olympics can make me rich." By his standards at least.