2024 Olympics: Breaking Is the Newest Sport—Meet the Athletes Going for Gold in Paris

Warning: The newest sport at the 2024 Paris Olympics may turn your world on its head.

Breaking is making its long-awaited debut at the Summer Games, and Sunny Choi, Logan Edra, Jeffrey Louis and Victor Montalvo are the B-girls and B-boys who qualified to represent Team USA on the world stage.

"I actually was really skeptical, because breaking, to me, had always been this very raw, kind of gritty street culture,” Choi, a former gymnast who discovered breaking in college and proved a natural at the gravity-defying form of dance, told E! News in a recent interview. The Olympics were "so refined, so elegant, and breaking just seemed like the complete opposite. It has this energy that is not really felt in some of the other sports."

That seemed to be the idea when, inspired by the response to the event at the 2018 Youth Olympics in Buenos Aires, the International Olympic Committee added breaking to the summer menu for Paris (though it is not going to be at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, adding to the sense of urgency for this year's competitors).

The women's breaking event takes place Aug. 9, followed by the men on Aug. 10, at La Concorde Urban Park. Nine judges will score the breakers in six categories: Creativity, personality, technique, variety, performativity and musicality—with creativity and performativity counting for 60 percent of the score.

Sixteen women and 16 men compete in respective round robin qualifying rounds, with the top scorers advancing to the quarterfinals. The medal rounds will be best-of-three, minute-long head-to-head battles.

Master of Ceremonies Max Oliveira will preside over the event where, much like in a rap battle, one person finishes a round and the other responds immediately—only with moves like the windmill, six-step and freezes. And, they're improvisational, with the breakers not knowing what music the DJ will be spinning ahead of time.

"I'm really excited to represent a whole country, but I'm more excited to represent my dance, my artform—and I'm super excited to bring the hip-hop culture to the Olympics," Victor told the Associated Press. "We’re going to bring something new to the table. We're going to bring a vibe, we're going to bring that peace, love, unity and having fun."

But while everyone on Team USA is considered a medal contender heading into Paris, they've got some stiff competition in the quest for gold. Meet the members of the U.S. breaking team and some of the international all-stars they'll be up against at the 2024 Paris Olympics:

B-Girl Name: Sunny

Born: Nov. 10, 1988

The daughter of South Korean emigrés graduated from Penn's Wharton School of Business and was director of global creative operations for skincare at Estée Lauder before stepping down in 2023 to focus on breaking full time.

"For so much of my life, I've been doing things the way I was told I was supposed to do them," the 5-foot-1 athlete, who qualified for Paris by winning the 2023 Pan American Games, told E! News. "I'm finally taking the time to step out of that and say, 'Hey, I'm going to put me first. I'm going to do what makes me happy.'"

B-Boy Name: Victor

Birthday: May 1, 1994

The reigning 2023 WDSF World Breaking champion learned "from the originals": Montalvo's dad and uncle, Victor and Hector Bermudez, were pioneering twin B-boys in their native Mexico.

"From us being in the Olympics, it’s going to grow," Montalvo told the Associated Press of his increasingly visible sport. "There’s going to be a new generation of kids that are going to want to do it… And you just need a dance floor and your body and self-expression."

B-Boy Name: Jeffro

Born: Dec. 20, 1994

The Texas native, whose parents emigrated to the U.S. from Haiti, graduated from University of Houston with a degree in kinesiology and sports management, but put his plans to become a physical therapist on hold to compete full-time.

"There's music playing," he said, explaining the vibes of breaking to NBC Olympics. "The crowd is dancing to the music. You don’t even have to be a performer. You could be on the side, just grooving. You're making noise. As dancers, we need to feed off of the crowd."

And, he added, "If we get it right [in Paris], we can create something unstoppable."

B-Girl Name: Logistx

Born: May 8, 2003

The youngest member of the U.S. breaking team has been busting moves since she was 7 growing up in Chula Vista, Calif. "It's been my outlet for a long time," she told NBC Olympics. "I feel like a good advocate, even though I'm young."

After punching her ticket to Paris at the Olympic Qualifier Series in June, Edra told Reuters of her twice-a-day training sessions, "I can be a competitive person so I still train very hard to focus on doing my best to win, but we're artist-athletes. It's still subjective to a certain extent. It's whoever is killing it that day."

B-Girl Name: Ayumi

Born: June 22, 1983

One of the more seasoned breakers heading into Paris, Fukushima—who won the 2021 World Championship at 38—humbly told Number Web (translated from Japanese by World Insight) that she learned to swim at 3 and loved playing outdoors as a kid, but "I wasn't good at sports, and I have a low level of physical ability."

That all changed when she was 21 and her sister introduced her to breaking in Kyoto. 

"Supporting your body with your hands is something I've never done in ｍy life," she said of those early days, which included losing her first-ever battle to a grade-schooler. "I didn't have the strength at all and couldn’t do what others can do. But being unable to do it was fun, and I wanted to try again the next day."

B-Girl Name: Nicka

Born: June 8, 2007

The teen from Vilnius, who started breaking at 5 in her living room, is the reigning world champion, besting B-girl Ayumi in the 2023 final last September.

Heading into Paris, she was balancing her last year of school with training six hours a day.

"Breaking is my life because all my thoughts and everything is connected to breaking," Banevic told Olympics.com. "My friends, everything comes from breaking. I sacrificed everything for breaking so that's why I always say that it's my life. For example, when I'm recovering, I'm also doing something that is connected to breaking like watching battles, analyzing to get better as an athlete."

She also works with a sports psychologist, because "it's important to control yourself," she added. "We're having discussions how to overcome overthinking and stress. And the key is to be in the present moment. It's easy to say it, but we are practicing that."

B-Boy Name: Dany Dann

Born: May 3, 1988

Born in French Guiana, Civil discovered breaking when he was 14 and moved to France with his best friend in 2008 so they could compete in events.

Civil, who shares two sons with wife (and B-girl) Marion, is a nurse but left his job at a Paris hospital to focus full-time on qualifying for the 2024 Olympics.

"Now I have more time to practice, and they [France's National Institute of Sport, Expertise, and Performance] give me the support that I need," he told Olympics.com, "and I do not have to think about how I pay my house and things like that. Now breaking is my job."

His sons, meanwhile, "prefer to play football," he added. "But I want to be a role model for them, teach them to stay focused and work hard."

B-Boy Name: Phil Wizard

Born: Jan. 25, 1997

Everyone started calling the member of the Wizards dance crew Phil Wizard anyway—so the Toronto native just went with it.

Recalling how his own mom and dad were a little concerned about his pursuit of choice, the 2023 Pan Am Games gold medalist hopes that the Paris Olympics will inspire more confidence among the families of aspiring breakers.

"I want kids to be able to see breaking at the Olympics and be excited," he told CBC Sports, "and for their parents to be excited to support them as well."

Because Kim is simply in his element. "I grew up watching anime and superhero movies, and it's like Superman battling Batman," he explained. "They're both very strong. Superman has his superpowers and Batman doesn't, but Batman can beat him because he knows his weakness. Sometimes breaking can be like that."

B-Boy Name: Amir

Born: Oct. 10, 1997

Zakirov calls the day he started breaking—Oct. 8, 2009—his second birthday.

"When I was a kid, I smoked, I drank alcohol," he told Olympics.com. "I was in a very bad community."

His moves were self-taught until, one day, he saw a poster advertising a breaking class and he ripped it down as a way of keeping the serendipitous information to himself. He saved money for classes by skipping lunch at school.

And to this day, no matter how stacked any competition is, Zakirov considers himself his toughest opponent. "I always battle with me," he explained. "For me, the most important thing is to show what I want. If I make some mistakes, if I don't like my dance, then for me it means I've lost."

B-Girl Name: India

Born: May 19, 2006

The teen from The Hague started hip-hop dance as a kid but found it "a little bit boring," so she switched to breaking when she was 7—a year too young to join the class, "but I wanted it so badly," she recalled to Olympics.com. So, they let her in anyway.

Now, like any professional athlete, she approaches her sport like a science.

"I train four to five times a week, leaving room for rest as well if my body starts getting tired," she told NL Platform in 2023. "If I have an upcoming battle or competition I change my practice and focus it towards my routine for the competition. If I’m not battling, I focus on creativity and flow in my dance."

But she also loves that there's room to showcase her individuality. "I don’t listen to traditional break music," she noted. "I like everything from Adele to Afrobeats and Dutch hip-hop."

B-Girl Name: 671

Born: October 19, 2005

Liu started breaking at 10 and it changed everything.

“Before breaking, if I didn’t know someone, my character was shy, and I couldn't communicate with them," she told RedBull.com. Over the years, it "developed me as a person, gave me more confidence, a vision and direction of how to live a good life, and through it, I made new friends."

Liu didn't compete outside of Asia until 2022, but she made an immediate impact on the international stage that year, taking solo titles in Slovakia and Portugal before earning silver at the WDSF World Breaking Championships in South Korea.

B-Girl Name: Raygun

Born: Sept. 2, 1987

Gunn is a lecturer in media and creative industries at Sydney’s Macquarie University by day and a breaker basically every other hour she has open. But she didn't get into the sport until she was in her 20s and met her B-boy boyfriend—who's now her husband and coach—Samuel Free.

"I first struggled with the upper body strength needed," Gunn told the AP after qualifying for the 2024 Olympics. "There were a lot of challenges and back then not that many girls were doing it."

But breaking ended up suiting her body and mind, Gunn completing her PhD thesis on the intersection of gender in Sydney's breaking scene in 2017.

Now that she's in her mid-30s, "I obviously spend more time warming up, more time in recovery and just make sure I look after my body," she told Al Jazeera.

"Breaking has such a positive force and impact on people's lives that do it,” Gunn said. "They get fit, they get a creative outlet and become part of this community. The platform that the Olympics gives us to inspire new generations of people is positive."

Disclaimer: The copyright of this article belongs to the original author. Reposting this article is solely for the purpose of information dissemination and does not constitute any investment advice. If there is any infringement, please contact us immediately. We will make corrections or deletions as necessary. Thank you.