Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of the new kid on the Olympic block, breaking. What is breaking, I hear you ask? Do not call it breakdancing, even though that is what you most likely know it as. Its athletes, or B-Boys and B-Girls, don’t like that.
The breaking community, that has its roots in the New York hip-hop movement of the 1970s, insist breakdancing was a term coined by those outside their clique, and that the reality of their sport is that it’s an art form, with clear, tangible metrics that judges can score from.
Those five metrics are technique, vocabulary, execution, musicality and originality, each accounting for 20 per cent of a breaker’s score, which they accrue over a best of three ‘battle’ against another breaker – there are 16 competitors in each of the men and women’s, sorry B-Boys and B-Girls, events, which will begin with a pool stage in which four groups of four compete in round robins.
The B-Girls are up first today, the round robin taking place in this afternoon’s blog before the quarters, semis and final this evening and the B-Boys’ competition tomorrow, so make the most of this weekend whilst you can because it’s already been confirmed that breaking will not feature in the 2028 LA Games, organisers rejecting it alongside karate (the one-hit wonder from Tokyo), motorsport, and kickboxing.
As an early preview, keep an eye out for Lithuania’s Dominika Banevič, (nickname Nicka) who beat Japan’s Ayumi Fukushima (nickname Ayumi) to World Championship gold last year, as well as Ukraine’s Anna Ponomarenko (nickname Stefani) – more on her in a bit though. There are no British interests, unfortunately.
Now, if you hadn’t already noticed, I’m not an expert on breaking, although I could bore you with the details of breaking’s socio-economic 1970s background and some of the other components of hip-hop that breaking accompanies – rapping, DJ-ing and graffiti – but I will try to help take you through this unique, and most likely one-off experience for the round robin stage. I’ll make sure to note any misbehaviour deductions that judges can enforce for inappropriate gesturing, any controversial DJ decisions that the breakers may not have anticipated, and any moves that make my head spin, as well as explain of course, who qualifies. Stay tuned!