In the words of the great philosophers of the late ’90s Bomfunk MC’s ‘B-Boyz, fly girls, put your hands in the air’ because breakdancing is now an Olympic Sport.
That’s right, in a surprising swerve from tradition, the typically rather stuffy folks at the International Olympic Committee, have confirmed that ‘breaking’ will be contested for the first time at the Paris Olympic Games in 2024.
‘Breaking’ as it will be called in the Olympic’s got the nod as part of an IOC initiative to incorporate more ‘urban’ events to try and capture a bigger youth audience. While that definitely sounds like something crusty executives would talk about in a boardroom, the outcome is pretty dope. ‘Breaking’ will be joined at Paris 2024 by the likes of skateboarding, sport climbing and surfing.
‘Breaking’ joins the Olympics thanks to fresh IOC rules that allow Olympic Games host cities to propose sports for inclusion in the Olympics if they’re particularly popular in their country and will add to the Games appeal. ‘Breaking’ was proposed by the Paris team two years ago, following a positive response to trials at the 2018 Youth Olympics in Buenos Aires, before being approved by both the IOC board and full membership.
‘Breaking’ will make its debut in prestige surrounds, joining sport climbing (parkour) and 3×3 basketball at Place de le Concorde. We can’t wait to see moves like this being busted out…
In other progressive Olympic Games news, the IOC has confirmed that the Paris Games will also mark the first time that participation rates will be an even 50% between male and female athletes. This equality milestone happening for the first time in Paris seems especially fitting as it was at the 1900 Paris Olympic Games that female athletes were included for the first time.
Speaking on both the addition of breaking and the equality milestone, Jean-Philippe Gatien sports director for Paris 2024 said, “It suits perfectly what we want to do with those Games. It will be Games that are young, urban and creatives.”
Here at Music Feeds we feel that the addition of breaking to the Paris 2024 Olympic Games substantially increases our interest in the games, and might just encourage a few of us to bust out our DVD copies of ‘Stomp The Yard’, form crews and see if we can’t score ourselves a ticket to Paris! We also quietly hope that we see a recreation of this Zoolander scene below.
