Breakdancing Now an Olympic Sport — and This Athlete Wants First Gold Medal

MIAMI — When Logan “Logistx” Edra competes in the first ever “Breaking” competition at the 2024 Olympics at Paris, her friends and students from her studio at northwest Miami will not only watch her compete for a medal but also celebrate a street dance becoming part of the biggest athletic platform in the world.“It’s not really about the gold medal,” the owner of BreakinMIA, at Hialeah Gardens, Florida, Sergio Eloy Garcia, tells the Sun. “It’s more about the credibility that comes with being accepted into that platform. Five years from now when we look back on this, we’ll say, ‘Did that really happen?’ This is a chance to show everybody where Breaking is at.”Ms. Edra, a California native who moved to south Florida during the Covid pandemic, is one of four Americans competing in Breaking, a new addition to the list of Olympic competitions at the 2024 Summer Games. Commonly known as break dancing, Breaking is a collection of improvisational dance techniques and complex moves done to hip-hop music.The dance took root on urban sidewalks in America, with children spinning on their heads and dancing to a boom box. It gained prominence in the 1980s and 1990s through underground battles that became a focus of popular movies.Fast-forward to 2024 and the first dance sport in Olympic history is a two-gender-based medal competition, one for 16 men known as B-Boys, and one for 16 women called B-Girls. They will compete August 9 and 10 at the Place de la Concorde at Paris.The owner of BreakinMIA, at Hialeah Gardens, Florida, Sergio Eloy Garcia. George Willis/The New York SunMr. Garcia, who opened BreakinMIA seven years ago to give break dancers a safe space to train, is among those who worked behind the scenes to bring break dancing to the mainstream and create sponsorship and income opportunities.“I’ve always been a fan of it going down a more athletic route,” Mr. Garcia says. “Art is so open-ended. Art doesn’t have a scoring sheet or rules. But sports allow you to have an infrastructure and business sense behind things. If we want young kids to have these big opportunities, there needs to be a structure and there needs to be athleticism behind it.”Mr. Garcia, 25, became “hooked” on break dancing at age 12 after watching the movie “You Got Served.” He has competed all over the world and was a member of Team USA before focusing on the business end of the sport.Ms. Edra, 21, was influenced by her father. She won major competitions in 2018, 2020, and 2021 and owns sponsorship deals with Red Bull and Nike. She qualified for the Paris Olympics through the Olympic Qualifier Series, a collection of competitions over the last two years.“Logan is a very special individual,” Mr. Garcia says. “She has an aura and carries herself in a professional way. She is chasing a gold medal, but she’s been a big star for a long time. She wants to make an impact for the sport. The gold medal would be the cherry on top.”Each dancer at the Olympics will have at least two rounds of one-on-one battles. They will be judged on the Trivium system based on three domains. The physical domain includes technique, control, and execution. The artistic domain focuses on creativity and personality. The interpretive domain judges overall performances. Judges will compare the two dancers on an iPad and decide on a winner.Michael Lo, 43, of the Miami Breaking Academy, is on the board of USA Breakin’, a nonprofit that supports the Breaking community and is among those who worked to establish a judging system that satisfied the International Olympic Committee.“We fought for a lot of the elements that are going to happen,” Mr. Lo tells the Sun. “There was a lot of advocating on behalf of the athletes and the culture. In addition to establishing rules, there are musical rights that have to be cleared. There’s a lot of stuff we had to go through to get to this point. We’ve been building for this for the last 10 years.”This could be a one-shot deal for Breaking. It’s not scheduled to be part of the 2028 Summer Games at Los Angeles, which is odd considering break dancing was born in America.Supporters like Messrs. Garcia and Lo hope the impact of being in the Paris Olympics will lead to more financial opportunities for professional breakers, while also attracting the next generation of young dancers.“It’s going to bring legitimacy to what we do,” Mr. Lo says. “You’ve seen the videos. It’s not easy. But if you want to pursue your dreams and want to work hard at it, then you can create a living at it and people will recognize it.”Mr. Garcia believes the Olympic exposure will generate more grassroots appeal. “What we’re hoping is a little girl or a little boy sees Logistx on that stage and gravitates toward her because it can save lives,” he says. “A lot of these kids that come through these doors are inner city kids, some come from bad neighborhoods and bad situations. Your traditional sports like football and basketball can be expensive. With breaking all you need is yourself and some music and you’d be very surprised where you can take this.”

Breakdancing Now an Olympic Sport — and This Athlete Wants First Gold Medal

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