Breaking Just Made Its Olympic Debut. Will It Return in 2032?

On Friday, Japan’s Ami Yuasa became history’s first gold medalist in Olympic breaking. Fans of the dance form had been eagerly awaiting this moment since 2021, when officials added breaking—the term preferred by most dancers—to the Paris 2024 program.

The event won’t be featured at the Los Angeles Games in 2028, but breaking’s Olympic debut was still historic. Competitors say they are proud to have brought the dance style that started in the Bronx in the ’70s to Paris’ Place de la Concorde.

“I’m super happy to be here,” says India Sardjoe, a breaker from the Netherlands who came in fourth, per BBC Sport’s Sonia Oxley. “It means a lot. It is the first time that breaking has been on such a high platform—it’s the biggest showcase in the world.”

The women’s competition took place on August 9. In the final rounds, Lithuania’s Dominika Banevic (who competes as “Nicka”) won silver, while China’s Liu Qingyi (“671”) won bronze.

On that first day, Olympic breaking “passed a test,” writes the New York Times’ Gia Kourlas. “It was not just a litany of power moves. It was funny. It was sweet. Musicality mattered. By the end, I was completely invested.”

The men’s competition took place on August 10. In the finals, the gold medal went to Canada’s Philip Kim (“Phil Wizard”), while France’s Danis Civil (“Dany Dann”) and the United States’ Victor Montalvo (“Victor”) won silver and bronze, respectively.

“I feel like we did our job,” Montalvo tells USA Today’s Tom Schad. “Everyone loved it. The crowd was going crazy.”

Ahead of the Paris Games, organizers had to develop a competition format for a style of dance whose lack of rules is “the main rule,” as Le Monde’s Luc Bronner writes. They decided that the dancers—called B-boys and B-girls—would compete in one-on-one dance battles. Each battle consisted of three rounds; in each round, both dancers got roughly 60 seconds. Judges then scored them in categories such as technique and musicality.

Improvisation is a big part of breaking. At the Olympics, the dancers didn’t know what music they’d be performing to until the DJ played it. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) licensed roughly 400 songs for the competition, per Rolling Stone’s Jon Blistein. The flattened cardboard that dancers performed on in the “early days” of breaking was replaced by a “round stage with violet accents” and a view of the Eiffel Tower, as the Times writes.

Olympic host cities can propose to include new sports, and Paris’ organizing committee selected breaking along with skateboarding, sport climbing and surfing. The proposal came after breaking became a big hit at Buenos Aires’ 2018 Summer Youth Olympics.

Organizers also wanted to make the Paris Games “more gender-balanced, more youthful and more urban,” as Thomas Bach, president of the IOC, said in a statement. “We have had a clear priority, and this is to introduce sports which are particularly popular among the younger generations. And also to take into account the urbanization of sport.”

While the 2028 Los Angeles Games will feature several new sports—such as flag football, squash and obstacle racing—organizers have opted not to include breaking on the program. However, that doesn’t mean it will never return to the Olympics. As BBC Sport writes, “[breaking’s] energetic debut may have been watched with interest by the organizers of Brisbane 2032 while they shape their Games.”

Margherita Bassi | READ MORE

Margherita Bassi is a trilingual storyteller and freelance journalist with a particular interest in ancient history, astronomy and human interest stories.