Canadian b-boy Phil Wizard (Philip Kim) took gold in the first Olympic men’s breaking tournament Saturday.
“I never thought I’d be here in my life,” the 27-year-old said, wiping away tears. He spent the last few sleepless nights “tossing and turning” because he was “stressed out of my mind.”
“I cried yesterday because I was so scared to do this, and, I’m just happy. I’m just happy,” he said.
Hometown favorite French b-boy Dany Dann (Danis Civil) won silver, and American b-boy Victor (Victor Montalvo) took the bronze after taking out Japanese b-boy Shigekix (Shigeyuki Nakarai). These Olympic medals may be the last for breaking, at least for some time — the dance form is not in the lineup of sports for the Los Angeles 2028 Games.
I wish they would break apart events like this vs “serious” competitive sports away from each other and the Olympics. Some events/sports have verifiable results, like somebody ran this fast in this amount of time, somebody lifted this amount of kg of weights, actual results that are in some sense pushing the limits of what humans are capable of.
Then you have the artistic, interpretive events, though they still require alot of talent and skill, you can’t quantify them, you can’t measure them in any meaningful way. They’re judged subjectively using whatever standards were developed probably decades ago. I’m sure they’re great to watch for fans of those events, but they don’t feel like they’re pushing any limits of human expression or anything, the Olympics is way too sanitized for anything like that.
I don’t know what the solution though is, hold two sets of Olympics, the Sports Olympics and the Artsy Olympics (four total with seasonal olympics)? I think it’s too much of a world tradition at this point, but it bothers me that they’re all considered at the “same level”.