Saturday, February 8, 2025

Highlights and Takeaways From Breaking’s Olympic Debut

Dance shone within the world highlight like by no means earlier than this previous weekend as breaking made its long-anticipated debut on the Olympic stage. In a packed amphitheater-style enviornment at Paris’ Place de la Concorde, 32 dancers from all around the world—16 b-boys and 16 b-girls—competed face to face to see who would go down in historical past as the primary ever Olympic breaking champions. Listed below are the highlights from Friday’s and Saturday’s jam-packed days of competitors.

The Setting

Even watching from residence, the thrill and vitality on the Place de la Concorde felt electrical. Hundreds of spectators, a lot of them breakers themselves, crammed the stands, grooving alongside of their seats and hyping up the rivals.

Music is the spine of each good battle, and on that entrance, the Olympics delivered. Two famend disc jockeys within the breaking scene—New York Metropolis’s DJ Fleg and Poland’s DJ Plash—have been on the decks, scratching and spinning iconic tracks from the likes of James Brown, Busta Rhymes, and A Tribe Known as Quest. The emcees, one other essential factor of hip-hop tradition, additionally rose to the problem: France’s Malik Moujouil (“Maleek”) and Portugal’s Max Oliveira saved the gang and rivals’ vitality excessive all through each 10-hour competitors days.

Although one in every of NBC’s announcers, Blythe Lawrence, was from outdoors the breaking world (gymnastics, to be actual), most commentary got here from insiders: breakers Sweet Bloise, Ronnie Abaldonado, and David “Child David” Shreibman. Whereas these accustomed to breaking may need appreciated a bit extra nuance of their deliveries, total they did a fantastic job explaining the fundamentals of the game and paying homage to its hip-hop roots.

The Scoring

A lot of the controversy round breaking as an Olympic sport has involved scoring. Organizers have been tasked with growing a system that might work in Olympic competitors whereas nonetheless honoring breaking’s historical past as a freestyle type.

The Video games in the end had 9 judges use a DJ fader to attain every breaker towards their opponent on approach, vocabulary, execution, musicality, and originality. Regardless of all of the uncertainty, the system appeared to work properly; there have been no challenges made to the outcomes of any rounds. It was refreshing to see that the judges—revered breakers from all around the world—valued foundational components and efficiency high quality as a lot as flashy tips. Whereas France’s veteran breaker Dany Dann, for instance, didn’t essentially match the physicality of Australian newcomer J. Assault, Dann ended up successful each single choose’s vote each rounds together with his mixture of musicality and character.

The Rivals

Although breaking was born within the Bronx, Group USA didn’t have the very best exhibiting in these video games. By the tip of 24 round-robin battles, each of the U.S.’s b-girls, Sunny Choi and Logan “Logistx” Edra, had been knocked out of the working.The b-boys of Group USA fared higher. Jeffrey “Jeffro” Louis and Victor Montalvo have been in a position to advance to the semifinals, with Montalvo making all of it the way in which to the bronze-medal battle, the place he earned a decisive win towards Japan’s Shigeyuki “Shigekix” Nakarai.

By Sunday night time, Canada’s Philip “Phil Wizard” Kim and Japan’s Ami Yuasa had been topped the Olympic b-boy and b-girl champions, respectively. (You’ll find the complete listing of winners right here.) Though only some breakers made it to the ultimate podium, there have been many lovely moments of sportsmanship among the many rivals, demonstrating how close-knit and supportive the breaking neighborhood is worldwide.

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