Kiev. Ukraine. Ukraine Gate – December 24, 2020 – Sport
Officials announced that Breaking — elite breakdancing — will make its Olympics debut at Paris 2024.
It will be the first DanceSport event to appear at an Olympic Games, having been staged at the Youth Olympics in Buenos Aires two years ago.
Paris 2024 will see 16 b-boys and 16 b-girls — the term used for competitive breakers, or breakdancers — compete in one vs one battles, and it is hoped the sport’s inclusion will attract a young audience to the Olympics.
At the 2018 Youth Olympics, there were three medals events that drew crowds of more than 30,000 people each day, according to the WDSF.
Measures that were introduced ahead of the Tokyo Olympics allow host cities to put forward new sports to be included in their Games.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) executive board also announced that skateboarding, sport climbing and surfing — three events that were due to debut at the postponed Tokyo Games — will be featured in Paris, too.
“Today is a historic occasion, not only for b-boys and b-girls but for all dancers around the world,” said Shawn Tay, president of the World DanceSport Federation (WDSF).
“The WDSF could not be prouder to have breaking included at Paris 2024, and we thank everyone who helped make it possible: the executive board of the IOC, the Paris 2024 organizers, the WDSF staff and, most importantly, the breaking community itself.
“It was a true team effort to get to this moment and we will redouble our efforts in the lead-up to the Olympic Games to make sure the breaking competition at Paris 2024 will be unforgettable.”
Alongside the additions, the IOC made subtractions: The slate of 329 medal events in Paris is 10 fewer than in Tokyo, including four lost from weightlifting, and the athlete quota in 2024 of 10,500 is around 600 less than next year.
Weightlifting should have 120 athletes in Paris, which is less than half of its total at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games. The sport could be dropped entirely due to its historic doping problems and IOC concerns over the pace and depth of reform at the International Weightlifting Federation.
The IOC stressed its future priorities for Paris, and beyond to the 2028 Los Angeles Games, by claiming it will hit a long-term target of equal participation by men and women athletes, and more urbanized events.
With Paris organisers needing time to prepare their project, the IOC kept to its pre-pandemic schedule to confirm the 2024 sports lineup this month even before some are tested in Tokyo.
Breakdancing will be called breaking at the Olympics, as it was in the 1970s by hip-hop pioneers in the United States.
It was proposed by Paris organisers almost two years ago after positive trials at the 2018 Youth Olympics in Buenos Aires. Breaking passed further stages of approval in 2019 from separate decisions by the IOC board and full membership.
In Paris, breaking has been given a prestige downtown venue, joining sport climbing and 3-on-3 basketball at Place de la Concorde.
Surfing will be held more than 15,000 kilometers (9,000 miles) away in the Pacific Ocean off the beaches of Tahiti, as the IOC already agreed in March.
Among the 28 established Summer Games sports, a total of 41 additional events were proposed.
All increases were rejected, including ocean rowing and parkour, and changes were allowed only at the expense of existing events being dropped. Two extreme canoe slalom events will replace canoe sprint events, and the men’s 50-kilometer race walk will be replaced by a mixed-gender team event.
The IOC was skeptical last year about an offer to clear AIBA’s $16 million (€13.2 million) debts, if the sport’s Olympic status was retained, by Russian boxing official Umar Kremlev who is now a candidate.
The AIBA election is scheduled as a Court of Arbitration for Sport panel of judges is preparing a verdict in a landmark case in the Russian doping saga that could see widespread punishments imposed on the nation’s sports.