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Breaking the 2024 Paris Olympics with Yang Kai

Breakdancing will officially be a part of the next Olympics & accomplished athletes are already preparing

LiFTED | Ciaran Dwyer | 13 Sep 2021


The Olympics - a prestigious institution with an incredible past spanning much of recorded history, providing a stage for the world’s greatest athletes on which to showcase their incredible talent, spawning incredible storylines, moments of greatness, power, and forever pushing the boundary of human potential ever further - is struggling for business.

Young people just aren’t that keen anymore.

That seems to have been the motivation for the announcement that the Olympic Games would be including a number of more ‘modern’ sports in the future. This past event, the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games held in the summer of 2021, saw the inclusion of skateboarding, sport climbing, and surfing alongside traditional track and field events.

But that’s just the beginning. The next Games will include...wait for it...breakdancing. Hell yeah! While the event wasn’t on during the 2020 Games early this year, it will be on the fixture for the 2024 Paris Games as ‘breaking,’ the original name it had when it started in the 1970s.

Talented Bboys and Bgirls from around the world have their eye on the top spot, including Yang Kai, champion of the third season of Street Dance of China. If you haven’t heard of Street Dance of China, drop whatever you're doing [which I guess is reading this article… so actually, don’t drop it right now, wait until the end maybe] and go check out some clips on YouTube because it’s nuts. If one spends any amount of time checking these dancers out, it’s impossible to argue that breaking isn’t a real sport. The moves are truly athletic.

Yang, also champion of HIPHOPINTERNATIONAL 2016 World Battles, plans to put a team of street dancers together to compete at the Chinese national games this year and the 2022 Asian Games, also held in China. The ultimate goal is putting points on the board to get recognized as possible talent to be sent to the 2024 Paris Games.

Yang earned his victory in the variety show after defeating some pretty strong competition, including French dancer Bouboo, one of the most successful breakers in the world. That’s right, international acts are welcome on Street Dance of China. The format can be a bit confusing for newcomers at first, but once you get the hang of it it’s a blast to watch the dancers compete for places on four teams, each helmed by a celebrity captain. Yang got onto the team of the Chinese superstar Wang Yibo this year, who took him on to win the thing entirely.

We’re looking forward to seeing the kind of talent Asia puts forward at the next Olympics as Hip Hop culture continues to grow in the region and more people take up all the subcultures that go with it, such as breaking and skateboarding.