Featuring extreme sports like skateboarding and breakdancing, the International Extreme Sports Festival, or FISE, has established itself globally as one of the biggest international competitions for action sports. Taiwan recently competed at FISE de Montpellier 2022 from May 25 through May 29 and was crowned champion for the FISE Breaking Battle Challenge – Crew event.

The Taiwanese dance trio of Bboy Lilma [Lilma Liu], Bboy What21 [Lo Kuo-chuan], and Bboy Quake [Quake Chan] took part against dancers from more than 50 countries in the crew section of the FISE Breaking Battle Challenge on May 28. The competition took the ‘Lucky Loser’ format, where the winning team in each quarter-final matchup gets to select a dancer from the opposite team to join their next round of battle, switching the competition from three-on-three to four-on-four, and later five-on-five in the semi-finals.

Together with the two new teammates, the trio defeated France, Germany, and Uganda in the finals and was crowned champion. Their performance was also rated exceptional by the audience, with What21 improvising his set by grabbing a strawberry offstage which he ate while dancing, adding some fun theatrics to the performance.

With breakdancing being added to the 2024 Paris Olympics, coach Bboy Choco sees the FISE Breaking Battle Challenge as a chance for Lilma, What21, and Quake to assess their skills and help them gain experience to prepare for the Olympic selection starting in July. The team will also be taking part in the Madrid Urban Sports 2022 event from June 10-12 in Spain.

Meanwhile, Taiwanese female dancer Yang Jia-li also made it to the top 16 of women’s single section, but was unable to advance further. Regardless, it was a great result for team Taiwan.