From our Olympics correspondent in Paris – This year's Games have marked the Olympic debut of breaking, with hip-hop fans flocking to the pop-up Urban Park at Paris's Place de la Concorde to watch the world's best b-boys and b-girls show off their moves. But with the Los Angeles Olympics organisers having decided to leave breaking off the agenda in 2028, the event's future is looking uncertain.
Do you know the name of the event that modern Olympic Games founder Pierre de Coubertin won his only gold medal in? Surely the man behind the modern pentathlon – an event combining fencing, swimming, show-jumping, cross-country running and shooting that gives you a rather worrying glimpse into the high-octane lifestyle expected of a 20th-century gentleman – must himself have been something of an all-rounder.
Like most pieces of trivia, it's a bit of a trick question – the event no longer exists. De Coubertin won the 1912 gold medal for literature, having submitted his poem – "Ode to Sport" – under a false name. It was the first year that the nascent Games had broadened their scope to include artistic as well as sporting competitions, a feature that would continue for decades until 1948. The decision marked the nature of the Games as something shifting rather than stilted, static – even stuck in time.
So it was perhaps in that spirit that the organisers of the Paris 2024 Olympics decided to build a pop-up Urban Park consecrated to all things hip-hop in the city's vast Place de la Concorde. Throughout the Games, crowds grown jaded of high jump and hurdles could instead stroll through the Tuileries Gardens and see skateboarding, three-on-three basketball, BMX and, for the very first time, breaking.
Breaking, more typically referred to as break-dancing – an exogenous term that the community apparently holds in considerable contempt – is a type of competitive street dancing first created by Black and Hispanic communities in the Bronx, New York in the 1970s.
By now, it's well and truly international. France's own flourishing breaking scene began in the down-and-out suburbs of Seine-Saint-Denis northeast of Paris in the 1980s, and have since spread to the outermost reaches of the nation. The two Frenchmen competing in today's competition, Dany Dann and Lagaet, grew up in the overseas territories of French Guiana and Martinique respectively.
Under the shade of a white canvas tent stretched atop eight towering steel pylons, 10 judges take their seat in the benches overlooking the mat. Bucket hats and basketball caps – these are not your average Olympic judges. Behind them are two DJs, who will be providing the musical breaks from which the form takes its name.
The b-boys have no idea what song they'll be dancing to, nor are they allowed to make the same move more than once throughout the competition. Beyond that, they have three minute-long breaks in which to show the judges what they've got.
The Canadian contender in the quarter-finals is called Phil Wizard. It's not the name on his birth certificate, but if he wins a medal tonight, it will be under that name that he steps onto the podium. Speaking after the evening's competition, he said that spontaneity was crucial to every battle.
“I go up there with truly nothing in my head,” he said. “I just go up there and whatever the music dictates me to do, I do, and I think that because of that I can create some magic moments.”
Looking at the highlights screened in slow-motion after every battle, you could be forgiven for thinking that the name of the game is power moves – windmills, swipes, head spins and other feats of acrobatic excellence. But breaking is a performance, with all the pageantry that entails.
The b-boys stride around one another with easy charisma, full of a bluster and bravado that they burst at will with a self-deprecating shift of their shoulders. The deadpan way they hit the floor, something slapstick in the way they slide across the mat, a full-body freeze held a moment too long – often the smallest moves are the ones that seem to show the most mastery.
“I think to the naked eye it’s very easy to think that the person who’s spinning the most and doing the craziest moves is going to win,” Wizard said. “There’s a lot of details within the dance, that’s why there are professional judges up there. For us, it’s a lot about style, originality and things that, maybe if you watch a lot of breaking, you’ll maybe understand.”
In the end, only four remain. Competing for bronze are US favourite Victor and Japanese breaker Shigekix. Victor moves like mercury, utterly fluid, utterly unpredictable. Other b-boys impress – Victor astonishes. Having been beaten in the quarter-finals by local breaker Dany Dann to general delirium in the French-packed stands, Victor pushes himself to feats of seemingly effortless fluidity, winning the bronze 3-0.
Speaking after the finals, Victor said he had tried his best to bring the community's collaborative spirit to Paris.
“This was different because I felt like we were all in it together,” he said. “This is not just a regular competition, this is the Olympics, and there are all eyes on us, different people who have never seen breaking. That’s why I was hyping everyone up, each and every one of my competitors, because I want the crowd to see that and I get so excited when the crowd goes crazy – for any b-boy.”
The battle for the gold medal pits Phil Wizard against the 36-year-old local favourite Dany Dann. Dann, who is sporting his trademark blue hair, has the crowd firmly on his side. Wizard, who later said he had been sobbing the day before from anxiety, walks onto the mat grinning, a red knit beanie pulled down almost past his eyebrows.
It's over in a matter of minutes – Wizard has won every round, shifting seamlessly from one move to the next, moving like no one else we've seen today. Speaking to reporters after the finals, Dann took his silver medal in stride.
“We showed the world that we’re athletes, but we’re dancers first,” he said.
Even the silver medal is, as he points out, something of a collector's item in the making. The three men are the first b-boys to have won Olympic medals in breaking – and they may be the last.
The organisers of the Los Angeles Games have declined to include breaking in the programme for 2028. Whether it will make an appearance in the following Games in Brisbane is also looking uncertain.
It's not clear what impact the b-boys' gravity-defying performances tonight will have on the event's future in the Games – but judging by the crowd's roaring reaction, it would be a shame if it wound up as just another piece of Olympics trivia.
