“Is this an Olympic sport?”ask the fans who gather in the Place de la Concorde to watch the competition breakdancingdiscipline that entered the Olympic catalogue for Paris 2024 and is already ruled out for Los Angeles 2024. Urban art that was born in the streets of the Bronx, New York, in the 1970s does not convince the viewer -at least the version adapted to the Games-, which sees the repertoire of pirouettes and somersaults to the rhythm of hip-hop as a spectacle rather than a competition.
In an attempt by the IOC to Bringing the Olympic Games closer to younger audiences and Promoting gender-sensitive youth sports around the worldon December 7, 2020, the inclusion of the breakdancing in this edition. A classification system and a rating model were created, resulting in the well-known battles in which A jury evaluates the creativity, personality, technique, variety, interpretation and musicality of each performance..
Despite having more than 30 million practitioners in the world, the breakdancing It is a complete unknown to the Olympic spectator“Until recently, people didn’t take us seriously, they rejected us or saw it as a hobby. The Games are allowing us to have a platform where we can show ourselves, to be taken seriously and for breaking to grow and expand,” he says. Ana Fury’Rage‘Spanish B-Girl who has illustrated us since Max and Eurosport. The Catalan is one of those that believes that the art he practices does not lose its essence by being part of the Games, one of the debates generated within the world. “Breaking is what it is regardless of the stage “wherever it takes place. Being at the Games is part of an evolutionary process and a window to expose ourselves, receive more support and dedicate ourselves to it,” he said.
Being in the Olympic Games is a response to the evolutionary process that the breaking and a window to expose ourselves and be able to receive more support and dedicate ourselves to it
Ana Furia, B-Girl and commentator on Max and Eurosport
The staging is worthy of the NBA. The breakersThey are called one by one by a pair of speakers who, together with the DJs, try to keep the show on top during the More than five hours that the competition lastsThe public cheers non-stop, some in the stands stoically enduring the summer sun of Paris and others at the foot of the spherical stage, sitting on the floor and watching the refined technique of the artists up close. Concepts such as air flare, windmill, scorpion, baby freeze, six step either handhop They are impossible for a novice to learn in an afternoon.
The B-Boys and the B-Girls They compete in eliminatory rounds while being evaluated by a jury composed of eleven experts.. Among them, the Spanish Jess Heredia ‘Jess‘, one of our referents and professional dancer -He has been in the company of Rafael Amargo and the Cirque du Soleil-. “There is a factor that is clearly subjective and it will always be like that. It is inevitable to think that there are things to improve, as in all sports, but we have done the best we can,” says Furia.
In purely sporting terms, it is worth noting that the women’s podium was dominated by the Japanese Ami Yuasa ‘Ami’, the Lithuanian Dominika Banevi ‘Nicka‘ and the Chinese Liu Qingyi ‘671‘while in the men’s category the winners were Canadian Philip Kim ‘Wizard‘, the Frenchman Danny Dan and the American Victor Montalvo. Names that will go down in history as the First and last? Medalists of a sport that, despite making its debut at the Olympic Games, is still not understood as such..
