Breakdancing will become an Olympic sport for the first time at the 2024 Paris Olympics, organizers announced on Monday as the sport was one of four to be approved for the summer games.
Breaking — which is the preferred term among its practitioners, rather than “breakdancing” — made its Olympic debut at the 2018 Summer Youth Games in Buenos Aires, and it was provisionally added last summer to the agenda for Paris 2024.
Breaking will make its Olympic Games debut, building on the success of the sport at the Youth Olympic Games Buenos Aires 2018.pic.twitter.com/ZthK3ZRxIv
— Olympics (@Olympics) December 7, 2020
International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach has praised the addition of the new sports as events that will make the Summer Games “more gender balanced, more youthful and more urban.” “We have had a clear priority,” Bach said after the IOC executive board’s meeting Monday. “And this is to introduce sports which are particularly popular among the younger generations. And also to take into account the urbanization of sport.”
Richard “Crazy Legs” Colón started breaking as a kid in the Bronx in 1977. At the dawn of hip hop, before the musical genre even had its name. Breaking was a style of dance, sure, but also an art form. A cultural cornerstone. A part of life. Crazy Legs, now 54, is one of the pioneers of breaking and the president of Rock Steady Crew, one of its iconic groups. He believes it will be important for prominent breakers like himself to work with the IOC and the World DanceSport Federation to ensure the Olympic version of breaking stays true to its roots.