Breaking, or breakdancing, is the newest sport that has been added to the Paris 2024 Olympic Games that is currently ongoing.
The event would feature athletes dancing and attempting to win favor from the judges and to take home the first-ever Olympic breaking medal.
What is breaking?
Breaking is a form of dancing that originated in the United States of America sometime in the 1970s. It is tied to hip-hop culture.
Break dancers use acrobatic moves and fancy footwork movements to dance to a beat as they attempt to to wow the crowd and defeat their foe.
What are the rules?
According to the official Paris 2024 Olympic Games website, the breaking competition would comprise two events, one for men and one for women.
Athletes will face off in solo battles and attempt to win glory for their country by dancing using moves such as windmills, the 6-step, and freezes.
Breaking Olympics schedule
The breakdancing competition at the Olympics kick off later this afternoon, Friday, 9th August 2024.
Pairings for the preliminary phase can be found below…
As can be seen, female athletes compete on Friday and males compete on Saturday.
The event will start with a round-robin phase (or group stage) with four dancers (called B-Boys or B-Girls) in a group.
Top two athletes in each group qualify for the quarter-finals, and then the competition proceeds till the winner is crowned.
History
Breakdancing competitions first started gaining popularity in the 90s, and by the start of the 2010s had gained worldwide recognition.
In preparation for being debuted at the Paris Games, a breaking competition was held at the Summer Youth Olympic Games in Buenos Aires in 2018 which ended up being a fan-favorite, paving the way for this year’s competition.
Sadly, as with most other games, our athletes did not make it and would not be dancing but that will not stop us from enjoying the games anyway.