Unbelievably, the Olympics are being held next year. But the short interval with which it feels the global pinnacle of sport is once again coming around has not stopped China, and Nanjing for that matter, from being ready. And that means, ready for break dancing!
This past Sunday, 8 January, saw the second qualification trials for the first China National Break Dancing Team held at the Extreme Sports Hall in Nanjing’s Lishui District.
The first round of trials was held in Shanghai in late December of last year.
Among the eight dancers who qualified for the Team was Liu Qingyi. Speaking with the Global Times, Lui said, “I feel so happy to compete for China. … I hope to stand on the podium at the Paris Olympics and win a medal for China. I will work hard toward this goal”.
But for any team member to qualify for Paris, they must still perform well at either the 2023 World Dance Sport Federation (WDSF) World Championships to be held in Belgium, or the Asian Games in Hangzhou, postponed by a year on account of COVID. Both are scheduled for September.
So how are athletes able to qualify for breaking in Paris 2024?
That’s the first thing to note; that as far as the Olympics are concerned, it’s not break dancing; it’s “breaking”. Then, competitors need to have been born on or before 31 December, 2008.
Host country, France, gets two places automatically, while the Tripartite Commission will also allocate four Universality places. Altogether, that’s three boys plus three girls.
As to their performance, the next two athletes to qualify for Olympic breaking in Paris will be the boy and girl who are named champions at the WDSF Championships in Belgium.
Then there are places for the 10 highest-placed athletes in the Continental Games or Continental Championships of their regions. In our case, that’s the Asian Games in Hangzhou.
Finally, a total of 14 places shall be decided between March and June of next year in the Olympic Qualifiers Series, at an as-yet-undecided location.
Once the action starts in Paris, the 16 boys and 16 girls shall compete to advance to the next rounds, and in the case of the gold-medal contest, in two final face-to-face solo battles.
Breaking at the 2024 Paris Olympics shall take place at the iconic Place de la Concorde, which is also the venue for the other urban sports of the next Olympics, namely the BMX freestyle, skateboarding and 3×3 basketball competitions.
The sport of breaking is making its debut in Paris following a successful trial run at the Youth Olympics in Buenos Aires in 2018, after our very own Nanjing hosted the second Youth Olympics back in 2014. In addition to breaking, the Olympics in Paris shall also feature the debut disciplines of skateboarding, sport climbing and surfing.
In the case of the last discipline above, readers may be interested to know that the surfing competitions at Paris 2024 shall be held in the waters off the Pacific paradise of Tahiti in French Polynesia that falls under the authority of the President of France.
