Breakdancers Look to 2024 Olympic Debut

As the world's eyes turn to Tokyo later this summer, some athletes are already setting their sights on the next Summer Olympics in Paris, 2024.

That's when breakdancing will debut as "breaking" as an official Olympic sport.

In New York City, three of the world's top competitive breakdancers practice their craft and talk about their hopes of competing in the Olympics.

Thirty-three-year-old dancer Fabiano Lopes is from Paraná, Brazil.

Better known to his 500,000 Instagram followers as 'B-Boy Neguin,' Lopes discovered breaking nearly 30 years ago, when he caught snippets of b-boys doing windmills on television.

"I think like overall, society needs to understand a little bit more of how amazing this art form, just like as football, as a soccer, or a basketball player," he says.

Lopes hopes to compete in the 2024 Olympics but realizes he does not know what condition his body will be in at that point.

He coaches other dancers and looks forward to the games as either a contender or a coach.

"Regarding who's going to be judging, how is it going to be judged, who is in control of this, who's competing, who's coaching, all of that? You know, at the end of the day, if something that makes hip hop, it makes this culture rise above, you know, this is all that matters for me," he says.

Twenty-six-year-old breakdancer Kateryna Pavlenko from Kharkiv, Ukraine, dances under the name 'B-Girl Kate.'

She says breakdancing has always been competitive since its earliest days of dance battles.

She looks forward to seeing it elevated on the world stage in 2024.

"It's been competitive. The battles is always about the winner, who wins and who loses. Someone is winning, someone is losing," she says.

Twenty-seven-year-old breakdancer Victor Montalvo of Orlando, Florida, says he was inspired to breakdance by his father and his father's twin, who used to dance in their native Mexico.

Montalvo dances as 'B-Boy Victor.'

Gong online was a turning point for him in understanding the global appeal of the sport.

"Once YouTube came around, like around 2005, that's when I started getting into YouTube. I saw like there was a scene all around the world," he says.

In 2020, the International Olympic Committee's pursuit of urban events to lure younger audiences saw street dance battles officially added to the medal events program at the 2024 Paris Games.

Breakdancing will be called "breaking" at the Olympics, as it was in the 1970s by hip-hop pioneers in the United States.

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