BRADENTON, FL – The Olympics are an international spectacle. Everyone roots for their respective country and feels an incredible sense of national pride when they succeed. It’s a multi-day event that billions watch. I’m going to be honest here, I don’t watch most of the events. I’m not what would be considered a “sports person;” I mean, I love hockey but honestly find most sports dull and difficult to focus on.

 In terms of the 2024 Summer Olympics, I, like always, looked through the events to determine which ones I find worth viewing. For me, archery and gymnastics were a no-brainer, on occasion I tune into volleyball, I watch snippets of skateboarding and watching people play table tennis competitively is one of my favorite things to come out of the 80s (which is really saying something). Through all the scrolling, one controversial event caught my attention, breaking. If you, like most of the world’s population, have no clue what “breaking” means, it means breakdancing, a style of dance that originated in the Bronx.

Now, debates on whether cheerleading or dance could be considered a sport have long been had, and my opinion is uncharacteristically set in stone. In my not so humble opinion, dance is a sport. By the Oxford Dictionary’s definition, a sport is, “activity that you do for pleasure and that needs physical effort or skill, usually done in a special area and according to fixed rules”.  Most dance styles fit the bill.

But is that really the question at hand? Just because something is a sport doesn’t mean it should be an Olympic sport. For example, cricket, a sport with staggeringly high and recent popularity, is not an Olympic sport.  Now why is that? I mean it’s quite a lot like badminton, which has been an Olympic sport since 1972. Cricket has clear-cut rules and standards for what a point is. These are traits several established Olympic sports don’t possess.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not coming for ice skating or gymnastics. In my mind they both have technical moves that can be scored by some form of a standard. But when talking about Breaking making its first appearance this year, the standard is extremely unclear (at least to a less-than-knowledgeable viewer). This would likely cause some Olympian’s and their respective countries to feel cheated which would cause unnecessary discourse between the athletes and the judges.

Don’t worry, Breaking isn’t the only Olympic sport I have some opinions on. Artistic swimming, a far more established Olympic sport, is also, in my opinion, too artistic for the Olympics. But that’s a topic for an entirely different time.