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Wow, just wow. To the list of traditional Olympic events such as Hammer Throw, Shot Put, Pole Vaulting and the Javelin Throw we can now add Breaking. This is not Breaking Bad but Breaking Amazing. What a great addition this is.

Shortly before we moved from Kamloops Kathie and I attended an event in Riverside Park which included what I now realize was Breaking. Fit and strong performance artists delighted audiences with amazing floor-based acrobatics which I now realize was break dancing, now called simply breaking.

Before you read further, watch this video. Then return to this page and I will share some detail for Saturday’s New York Times.

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In “Throw-down in Paris”, Jonathan Abrams who covers the intersection of sports and culture for the NYT gives a bit of history and explains some basic breaking moves.

Breaking is a new sport at this year’s Summer Olympics — at least we’ll call it a sport for the sake of the Games. You probably know it as break dancing, the art form in which performers spin, pose, glide and dance across the floor with incredible athleticism and charisma.

The event debuted yesterday in Paris with the women’s, or B-Girls’, competition. Ami Yuasa of Japan, known as B-Girl Ami, bested Lithuania’s Dominika Banevic, or B-Girl Nicka, to win breaking’s first gold medal. The men, or B-Boys, are competing today.

Here is some background.

1. How did breaking get into the Olympics?

Innovative Black and brown youth in the Bronx invented breaking in the 1970s as one of the core elements of hip-hop, along with lyricism, graffiti and D. J. ing. The dance spread nationally and globally through movies like “Beat Street” and pioneering crews providing demonstrations in countries like Japan and England.

Breaking has always centered on competition. Individuals and crews battled with dances that involved style, flair, confidence and one-upmanship. Competitions grew more popular in Europe in the 1990s, and the art form took a turn toward sports in 2001, when Red Bull sponsored the first Lords of the Floor, a tournament featuring crews from around the world.

The International Olympic Committee has not hidden its intent to attract a younger and more diverse audience with new events like breaking and skateboarding. It added breaking to the Paris program in 2021, after the sport made a splashy introduction at the Buenos Aires 2018 Youth Olympic Games. Still, some pioneers and purists are skeptical about breaking at the Olympics.

2. How is the competition being judged?

How to objectively assess an art form was one of the most vexing questions around bringing breaking to the Olympics. The answer? With judges. A lot of them.

Nine judges score the competition, using five criteria: execution (the ability to land moves cleanly), musicality (syncing the moves with the beat), originality (capacity for improvisation and creativity), technique (maintaining physiological control) and vocabulary (the range and quality of moves). The breakers do not know what music they will be dancing to beforehand, which allows for spontaneity.

The battles are divided into best of three rounds, which last up to a minute each. Win and advance. Lose and you’re out.

The scoring does not resemble anything else we’ve previously seen at the Games. Judges use sliders to decide the leaders of a battle. And they have “misbehavior buttons” that can deduct up to 10 percent of the final score for a severe infraction like overt crassness.

3. Who is competing?

You might expect that, having invented the sport, the U.S. would be at the forefront, as it was in basketball with the Dream Team in 1992.

Not necessarily. Within the U.S., breaking has dipped and risen in popularity since its birth nearly 50 years ago. Globally, though, it has remained more popular, especially in countries like the Netherlands, Japan and France.

The field is diverse, reflective of breaking’s reach. Banevic, a 17-year-old prodigy from Lithuania, learned breaking from YouTube videos. The veteran Korean B-boy Hong 10, who is 40, has been around long enough to have moves named after him. Some of the American competitors began in other sports — Sunny Choi was a gymnast — while others, like Victor Montalvo, have been breaking since they can recall.

Watch for the three moves

Top Rock: The opening salvo of a routine, in which breakers stand and dance before getting to the meat of their routine. The moves were originally meant to clear space on the dance floor and allow room to operate.

Freeze: When a breaker stops on a dime in a difficult, gravity-defying pose and holds the shape for a few seconds. Freezes usually signify the end of a combination of moves and coincide with the music’s beat.

Windmill: If you know one power move, it’s likely this popular one, where breakers rotate their body in a constant circular motion with their legs splayed in a V-shape while supported by their back, arms and shoulders.

So with this information in hand, watch the video a final time. What do you notice? Are you as amazed and entertained as I am? Do you plan to take up the sport? While originally shaped around a competitive spirit, the element of competition is not vital to the craft. Breaking is a space to share community with others. There is a certain democracy about Breaking. Though the art requires supreme physical fitness, a long-term commitment to excellence, high performance ability, discipline and talented instruction.

Enjoy.

Thanks to Janine Carlson for the nudge