The 2024 Paris Olympics are almost upon us. This year's Olympics will see the addition of several new events. Kayakcross will be making its debut in the canoe slalom competition. Men's artistic swimming will also be making its Olympic debut. But perhaps the most fascinating new event will be breaking, which debuted at the 2018 Youth Olympic Games and was so successful that it will be included in the 2024 Paris Olympics.
Whenever a new sport is introduced to the Olympics (or even if it's not a new sport), there's a good chance you'll turn on your TV and see a sport you don't understand at all, so in this space we'll endeavour to tell you everything you need to know about the sport of breaking and how to enjoy it.
More informally, breaking is a more formalized version of breakdancing. The Olympic website describes it as an “urban dance style” with roots in hip-hop culture, and it sounds a lot like what you're probably imagining: a low-slung style that relies on lots of twists, spins and precise footwork, using every part of the body for leverage.
Unlike some of the lesser known Olympic sports, breakdancing has a presence in pop culture that makes it likely that the average American consumer is at least familiar with it. Step up Movie series.
Of course, what Channing Tatum, who plays Tyler Gage, was doing was a little different than what athletes competing in the Olympics do, so how exactly does breaking work in Paris?
There will be a total of 32 participants, 16 men and 16 women, known as “B-Boys” and “B-Girls.” Participants will compete in a round-robin format, 1-on-1 matches, then advance to the medal match via a losers' bracket.
Each “battle” features three one-minute performances per contestant. The battle ends when one breaker survives two rounds. As the Olympics website explains, “Competitors will combine power moves like windmills, six-steps and freezes to adapt their style to the beats of DJ tracks, improvise and perform in a bid to win the judges' votes and become the first breaker to win an Olympic breaking medal.”
As mentioned above, these are not choreographed routines. This is not figure skating, where all the moves are perfected months before the Olympics and the music is customized for each routine. Breakers don't know what music will be playing when they battle, instead they must improvise based on the music they hear. So this is not only a battle of dance, but also a battle of creativity.
All of this raises a natural question: How do breakers win?
According to NBC, Breaking will feature a panel of nine judges who will evaluate each performance based on six aspects: creativity, individuality, technique, diversity, performance and musicality.
However, the categories are not weighted equally: Performance and Creativity account for 60% of the score, while the other four account for 40%.
Because it's a virtually brand new sport, it's not likely that some big-name breaker will come to Paris and win, so it's an opportunity for someone to make a name for themselves and impress the international community.
On the men's side, NBC lists Victor Montalvo and Geoffrey Lewis of the United States as skaters to watch, along with Phillip Kim of Canada, Naruyuki Hanai of Japan and Danis Civil of France.
On the women's side, Sunny Choi and Logan Edler will represent the United States as top breakers, with Lithuania's Dominika Banevich, France's Cy Dembele and Japan's Fukushima Ayumi also expected to do well.
It was a pretty shocking development, and the destruction do not have It was selected as a sport for the Los Angeles 2028 Games. The International Olympic Committee chose to move in a different direction before seeing how breaking would be performed at the Paris Games, a development the World DanceSport Federation said it was “deeply disappointed” with.
So the 2024 Olympics is hugely important for the future of breaking at the Olympics: if it attracts enough attention, it could force the IOC to consider bringing it back to the Olympics in Brisbane, Australia in 2032. If not, this may be our only chance to see breaking on such an international stage.
So…enjoy it while you can!
