Breaking (aka breakdancing) at the Olympics: Huh? Why? How does it work as a sport?

Henry Bushnell

PARIS — The last of 45 sports to begin here at the 2024 Olympics is something that many wouldn’t consider a sport at all: Breaking, popularly known as breakdancing, is all set for its Games debut.

It starts Friday with the women’s competition at 4 p.m. here in Paris (10 a.m. ET) and throughout the evening. The men follow on Saturday. The bronze- and gold-medal battles are at 3:15 p.m. ET each day — and yes, “battle” is the official term.

But no, the Olympic B-girls and B-boys won’t be dancing on cardboard boxes. Breaking has evolved a lot from its 20th-century American roots. Here’s how.

Breaking, in its original form, was an art born in 1970s New York. It migrated from parties to the streets, became one of the four pillars of hip-hop, went mainstream in the 1980s … and then sort of died off.

But it didn’t die out. It went underground, then international. It mutated and gave rise to a competitive circuit, where breakers would battle and be judged. That’s the type of competition that, a couple decades later, is coming to the Olympics.

To the dancers — “breakers” or “B-boys”/”B-girls” — and anybody in the community, it’s “breaking.”

To your very confused aunt, it’s probably “breakdancing,” because that’s the term mainstream American media coined in the '80s. But the original term, and the one used here at the Olympics, is “breaking.”

“I don't like the term breakdancing, because that's what media gave us,” U.S. Olympic breaker Jeffrey Louis, aka B-boy Jeffro, said. “Like, that's what everybody know, that's what the masses know. [But] it's called breaking.”

Breaking is a type of dance with four main elements:

  • Toprock or Uprock: Breakers begin upright, then transition to the floor.

  • Downrock: The flashiest, quickest part of the dance. Breakers, connecting to the ground with both hands and feet, spin and twist and contort their body.

  • Power moves: The highlight. Emphatic, athletic, eye-catching moves that require significant strength.

  • Freezes: Sometimes, though not always, at the end of a performance, a breaker holds a pose — sometimes upside down — that the average human often can’t even comprehend.

The Olympic competition, like others, is a series of head-to-head battles, structured just like a basketball or soccer tournament would be. There’s a preliminary “round robin” (group stage), then quarterfinals, semis and a final.

Each round-robin battle is two rounds; each knockout battle is three rounds. In each round, one breaker performs for about 45 seconds; then the other responds. Judges use five subjective criteria — execution, musicality, originality, technique and vocabulary — to declare a winner.

Breaking was conceived by Black and Latino men and boys in the Bronx. It was a means of expression; a creative outlet; an impromptu, acrobatic style of dance often performed during the “break” — the percussive interlude woven into a song.

Then it became something more. Nationwide and international tours brought hip-hop and breaking to a broader audience. Movies helped popularize it. And as it spread, within the communities from which it had spread, it became a bit less cool.

But it caught on elsewhere, in places like Germany and Mexico and South Korea. It remained a dance, but in the 1990s and 2000s, competitions multiplied. Red Bull began sponsoring some. The big break — no pun intended — then came in 2018, when breaking was added to the Youth Olympic Games in Buenos Aires. It was a hit. And Paris 2024 organizers decided to follow suit.

Yes. In addition to the Red Bull series, there are world championships. There are other events in Europe, Asia and the U.S. Breaking also features at the World Urban Games.

This is where breaking’s inclusion gets complicated. Many in the breaking community have glared at the Olympics with skepticism. Some see an overwhelmingly white, Western European institution commercializing an art form that many Black and brown pioneers never really monetized. In short, they see a culture being co-opted.

But others see a golden opportunity to bring that culture to the world, on sport’s biggest stage; to tell the stories of the founding fathers; to “pay homage to the roots of hip-hop, pay homage to the elders of this dance,” as U.S. breaker Victor Montalvo said.

It’s impossible to gage how many people fall in each camp; but it’s clear the community is split. “You're either pro-Olympic or not,” Louis said. “[Some are] like, 'No, we gotta keep it hip-hop. We gotta keep it underground. All this is gonna mess it up.' I'm like, ‘Nah, it's only gonna bring light to it.’”

Its addition to the Olympic program is part of the IOC’s effort to attract younger audiences. (Because, ya know, Gen Z isn’t watching much weightlifting or equestrian.) Yahoo Sports’ Jeff Eisenberg covered that trend in depth here.

Nope. It won’t be on the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic program. If it’s a hit here in Paris, though, it could return in 2032.

Breakers come from all walks of life. Team USA’s quartet represent the diversity perfectly. Louis is a Black man from Houston who learned from his brothers. Montalvo learned from his dad, who was a breaker back in 1980s Mexico. Sunny Choi, the top-ranked American woman, is the Korean American daughter of Ph.D.s, and a University of Pennsylvania graduate, who quit her job at Estée Lauder, the world’s second-largest cosmetics company, to pursue breaking — which she originally “stumbled” upon as a drunk, “lost” freshman at Penn.

PARIS, FRANCE - JULY 21: Victor Montalvo, Grace Choi, Jeffrey Louis and Logan Edra try on clothes during Team USA Welcome Experience ahead of Paris 2024 Summer Olympics at Polo Ralph Lauren on July 21, 2024 in Paris, France. (Photo by Joe Scarnici/Getty Images for USOPC)
Logan Edra, Victor Montalvo, Grace Choi and Jeffrey Louis will represent the U.S. in the first-ever breaking competition at the Olympics. (Joe Scarnici/Getty Images for USOPC) (Joe Scarnici via Getty Images)

There are four — the maximum number that a given country can send: Montalvo, Louis, Choi and Logan Edra.

In breaking, they go by B-boy Victor, B-boy Jeffro, B-girl Sunny and B-Girl Logistx, respectively.

Louis and Montalvo were ranked fifth and sixth, respectively, in the Olympic qualification standings on the men’s side. Choi and Edra were 10th and 14th on the women’s side.

Some of the training is akin to what you’d picture the average Olympian doing. Breakers lift weights; they work core and upper-body strength; they do plyometrics or yoga to improve explosiveness and flexibility.

Some of the preparation, though, is simply breaking. So much of the sport is still rooted in the art — in improvisation and personal expression. Routines aren’t choreographed or pre-determined like in gymnastics or figure-skating.

“Style is a huge part of breaking,” Louis explained. “It's embedded in hip-hop. So, in hip-hop, you have your own individual style, and it carries on to breaking. You want to have your own individual style, your own individual look, flavor, and it all translates into your performance.”

Nope. When they arrive at La Concorde, the Olympic venue, they’ll have no idea what song they’ll be dancing to.

That’s why they can’t script anything ahead of time. They hear the DJ’s track. They may or may not recognize it. And they have to try to connect with it.

There is no gymnastics-style scoring system. There are no points. The judging is “comparative” — meaning each judge assesses the two performances and, based on the five criteria, decides which breaker was better.

There are nine judges. Each submits their vote after each round. Those become a score — say, 8-1 or 5-4 — and a win for whichever athlete received more votes.

In the group stage, the breakers are ranked by number of rounds won — with total votes as a tiebreaker. In the knockout stage, rounds won are all that matters — it’s best-of-three, first to two wins.

(Or, at least, that’s how a primer distributed by organizers to media explains it. Some of the specifics have been murky and/or misreported. Months ago, for example, there were six criteria, not five: creativity, performativity, musicality, personality, technique and variety. Some of the confusion stems from the fact that non-Olympic competitions, such as Red Bull competitions, are judged differently.)

Yep. “It's so vague,” Louis said. “Because, everybody has their own style. So, how do you … say, 'Well, this guy connected with the music better, this guy had better technique'? You know? Everybody has their own different movement. … That's the hard part, because everybody's doing unique movements.”

Many of the judges are former breakers. But still, Louis said: “It's hard to trust the judging. Even though we try to make it objective, it's still subjective. It's art. You're judging art. And it's transformed into a sport. But we do try to keep it as non-biased as possible.”

Yes. Sometimes. “In breaking, it's a battle. It's a battle culture — hip-hop is,” Louis explained with a chuckle. “In breaking, we call out judges. Like, if I felt like I was wronged in a battle, sometimes I will [say], 'Hey, you gotta show me what you mean.’”

That, however, isn’t the type of thing that would happen on the Olympic stage, he said.

Friday, Aug. 9: B-Girls Breaking

  • Round Robin: Noon ET on Peacock and NBCOlympics.com.

  • Quarterfinals: Starting 2 p.m. ET on Peacock and NBCOlympics.com.

  • Semifinals: Starting 2:45 p.m. ET on Peacock and NBCOlympics.com.

  • Bronze Medal Battle: 3:15 p.m. ET on E!, Peacock and NBCOlympics.com.

  • Gold Medal Battle: 3:23 p.m. ET on E!, Peacock and NBCOlympics.com.

Saturday, Aug. 10: B-Boys Breaking

  • Round Robin: Noon ET on Peacock and NBCOlympics.com.

  • Quarterfinals: 2 p.m. ET on E!, Peacock and NBCOlympics.com.

  • Semifinals: 2:45 p.m. ET on E!, Peacock and NBCOlympics.com.

  • Bronze Medal Battle: 3:15 p.m. ET on E!, Peacock and NBCOlympics.com.

  • Gold Medal Battle: 3:23 p.m. ET on E!, Peacock and NBCOlympics.com.

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