Dust off your boombox and buckle up for breaking where b-boys and b-girls will be top-rockin’ their way into Olympic history.
It’s going to be hard to miss the only new sport added to the programme for Paris 2024 with its thumping hip-hop, rebellious roots, battle format and iconic Place de Concorde venue
Breaking is in the slipstream of skateboarding, surfing and BMX, sports that have simultaneously and successfully changed the face of the Games and harnessed its spirit.
How will the new kid on the block adapt to its new Olympic surroundings?
It is a unique addition but shares much obvious common ground with gymnastics.
Max Whitlock performs ‘flare’ moves on the pommel horse that are a staple of breaking.
Breakers combine ‘top rock’ - standing moves - and ‘down rock’ floor moves in a routine set to beats, facing each other in a one-on-one ‘battle’.
For goodness sake don’t say breakers dance or compete, they ‘throw down’, of course.
A battle features a fixed number of sets, typically two or three throw downs until the final, which has three or five throw downs which can’t be longer than a minute.
An uneven number of judges score battles on six weighted criteria - creativity, personality, technique, variety, performativity and musicality.
This format appeared at the 2018 Youth Olympics in Buenos Aires, a crucial step towards formal Olympic inclusion.
To make it to Paris, athletes have to secure one of 32 quota places, 16 for b-boys and 16 for b-girls, with a maximum of two per nation.
Team GB are never far away when Olympic history is made and breaking is no different.
There is a small but thriving breaking culture in Britain, with scenes in Derby, Manchester, London, often coalescing around universities and their societies.
The lack of a club system preserves the unique feel of an art that lives anywhere it can.
A key figure in the early stages of elite breaking is Becci Edgington-Harvey, a b-girl herself for 15 years and also Performance Manager for GB Boxing.
She found the sport at a public performance in Birmingham and remembers using the floor of a Subway restaurant to practice, dodging crumbs in between routines.
She said: “It’s a beautiful culture. It’s a culture of helping each other, celebrating hip-hop and dance and sharing.
“It’s a small community of people but a really friendly one. It’s way more friendly than people think it would be and it’s a great celebration of hip-hop culture in all its forms.
“A lot of people remember seeing (breaking) on cardboard in the 80s and think it’s cool but don’t understand the culture that has carried on.
“It’s not that impressive on a dance floor at someone’s wedding! But it’s a very demanding full-body movement that demands balance, utilising levels and a real progression in difficulty.
"There’s a freedom to it and that’s what people enjoy. Every breaker is different, some are more natural on their hands than their feet and they’ll incorporate more of that.”
The response in the British breaking community to Olympic inclusion has been positive.
Some of the best b-boys and b-girls in the world are British - for Adam Peaty read B-Boy Sunni and for Laura Kenny read B-Girl Roxy.
Born in Malaysia, Sunni moved to south-west England aged four and filled his evenings trying out tricks with his mother who is from a circus background.
He now has a decade and more of elite breaking experience, the first Red Bull BC One All Star from the UK and UK champion two years running.
He said: “People can see where I’m coming from when I’m dancing. I don’t get angry much – I’m always smiling or laughing.”
Sportsbeat 2022