Breakdancing given green light for Paris Olympics 2024 along with skateboarding, surfing and sport climbing

Lausanne: Breakdancing was one of four new sports along with skateboarding, surfing and sport climbing to get the Olympic green light on Monday for inclusion at the 2024 Paris Games. The four sports were included as the International Olympic Committee (IOC) executive board met to confirm the Paris 2024 programme. Skateboarding, sport climbing and surfing have already been added to the programme for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, which will take place in 2021 after being postponed by a year because of the coronavirus pandemic. Breakdancing, which grew up alongside hip hop in the South Bronx of New York in the 1970s and is officially known in sport terms as “breaking”, appeared at the 2018 Youth Olympics in Buenos Aires, in the form of head-to-head “battles”. Russia’s Sergei Chernyshev, competing under the nickname Bumblebee, won the first breakdancing gold medal for boys in that event, while Japan’s Ramu Kawai won the girls’ title. Federations of sports that already have Olympic status were left disappointed in their bid to increase events within their sports as IOC president Thomas Bach said that none of the proposed 41 events would be included in Paris. While some sports substituted in some events within their existing event numbers, Bach said medal events had actually gone down from 339 to 329. Bach added that the athletes’ quota for Paris had been fixed at 10,500, including those participating in the four new sports. That represents a decrease of 600 from Tokyo Games, while gender equality would be attained for the first time in Olympic history in Paris.