Breaking is a real sport. The world’s best do street gymnastics to a hip-hop beat. To reiterate: it is a real sport, at its best extraordinary demanding and thrilling. It is that rare experience that locks the audience in. At world-class breaking, no one, repeat no one, idly scrolls their cellphone. The crowd, young, urban, is part of the scene. And it is a scene. A scene you want to be part of. Especially if you are a teen or 20-something, the Olympic target audience.
Breaking was in for Paris 2024. It’s out for LA28. It’s unclear whether it might come back for Brisbane in 2032 and beyond.
A key challenge in breaking’s Olympic future – in or out – is the World DanceSport Federation, the international federation that oversaw breaking to and through Paris
Perhaps nothing underscores that challenge than the WDSF World Ranking, readily available online for both men and women, or in the jargon, bboys and bgirls:
- Raygun, the Australian breaker Rachael Gunn, is women’s No. 1.
From the WDSF website: Raygun your world No. 1
Gunn, a university lecturer from Sydney, now 37, did not score a single point at the Paris Games in any of her three rounds. She became a worldwide meme on social media for a routine that included mimicking a kangaroo.
Gunn told Australian television in recent days, referring to the backlash her performance, “It is really sad to hear those criticisms. I am very sorry for the backlash that the community has experienced but I can’t control how people react. The energy and vitriol that people had was pretty alarming.
“While I went out there and had fun, I did take it very seriously. I worked my butt off preparing for the Olympics and I gave my all, truly. I think my record speaks to that.”
Her Olympic record: 18-0, 18-0, 18-0. That’s zero points earned, 54 against. The WDSF nonetheless has Gunn No. 1 in the entire world.
As an email making the rounds in certain breaking circles puts it, “Literally, it’s a joke. A last-place person at the Olympics ranked first in their world ranking system signifie[s] a broken sport organization and system. You do not see this in any [other] sports …”
- None of the Olympic medalists, the three bboys or three bgirls, can be found in the WDSF World Ranking.
The WDSF bgirl rankings go 1 through 57.
Japan’s Ami (Ami Yuasa) won gold; Lithuania’s Nicka (Dominika Banevič) silver, China’s 671 (Liu Qingyi) bronze. None is included in the rankings.
The WDSF bboy rankings go 1 through 85.
Canada’s Phil Wizard (Philip Kim) took gold, France’s Dany Dann (Danis Civil) silver, Victor of the United States (Victor Montalvo) bronze. None is included in the rankings.
- Nicka and Victor were crowned winners at the 2023 WDSF World Breaking Championships in Leuven, Belgium, on Sept. 24 that year. Again, neither is in the World Ranking.
- Five of the top 10 bgirls, per the WDSF rankings, are from Australia. So are No. 11, 14, 18, 22, 23, 26 and 27.
WDSF did not respond to a request Monday for comment.
Here is Australian TV Monday reacting to the news:
Something is obviously askew. What’s going on?
- 1. The WDSF World Ranking is based on a 52-week cycle. That means points you earn from an event fall off one’s ranking after one calendar year
- 2. WDSF held a limited offering of events that count toward these rankings
- 3. Because of 1 and 2, the WDSF World Ranking essentially accounts for two events:
o The WDSF Oceania championships, held in late October 2023, and
o The WDSF Hong Kong World Series, in December 2023
Raygun won the Oceania champs, worth 1000 points. Simply, that puts her atop the World Ranking, until late October 2024
How many competitors showed up to the Oceania champs? Fifteen.
Now some backstory:
The WDSF is not only new to the Olympic scene but not particularly financially robust.
The 2024 provisional budget, per the federation’s 2023 financial report, was set at 2.87 million Swiss francs, about $3.38 million at current exchange rates. The International Olympic Committee provided funding, spread across three years – 2022, 2023 and 2024 – to make sure WDSF could deliver breaking at the Paris Games. That funding package, all in, is $3.1 million.
So, let’s be clear: the priority was the Olympics.
In case there is any doubt, from the 2023 financial report:
“Additionally, WDSF it again working to do the impossible, by seeking to keep the door open for Breaking in the Olympic Games of LA28 and Brisbane32.
“Success is not guaranteed, and we all need to work collaboratively to succeed.”
To that end, and separately from its World Ranking, WDSF ran an Olympic Ranking qualifying list.
This list was in operation from July 1, 2022, through Dec. 31, 2023. It determined access to Paris directly or ensured participation in what was called the Olympic Qualifier Series, events held this past spring in, first, Shanghai, and then Budapest to help figure out who was going to compete in Paris.
It’s easy for anyone to track the leading breakers to see who – as far back as April 2023 – stopped taking part in certain events, with the exception of those that offered direct tickets to Paris. The focus was on the Olympic Ranking.
Some key examples:
- Bgirl Ayumi (Fukushima Ayumi of Japan), fifth in Paris, stopped after the July 2023 Asian continental championships
- Bgirl India (India Sardjoe of Holland), fourth Paris, after April 2023 Brazil World Series (qualified directly to Paris by winning European Games in June 2023)
- 671, bronze, no more after July 2023 Asian continental championship (qualified directly to Paris by winning Asian Games in October 2023)
- Nicka, silver, nothing after August 2023 Portugal World Series (again, 2023 World Championship winner that September)
- Ami, gold in Paris, stopped after the July 2023 Asian continental championships
On the men’s side
- Bboy Jeffro (Jeffrey Louis of the United States), fifth in Paris, stopped taking part after May 2023 PanAm continental championship
- Bboy Shigekix (Shigeyuki Nakarai, Japanese flagbearer at the Paris Games), fourth, no more after August 2023 Portugal World Series (into Paris directly by winning Asian Games)
- Victor, bronze in Paris, stopped after Portugal (2023 World Championship winner in September)
- Dany Dan, silver, stopped after May 2023 Euro continental championship (into Paris directly by winning following month’s European Games)
- Phil Wizard, gold in Paris, nothing after May continental games (into Paris by winning November 2023 PanAm Games
Two quick notes: Those who stopped early did take part at their continental games and the 2023 worlds because each of those events was worth a direct ticket to Paris. Further, no ranking points were available at continental games – not continental championships – or the world championships
Because there are and were two lists, though, that first list, World Ranking – the one that, for instance, now has Raygun at No. 1 – carried undisclosed implications for athlete seeding at Paris 2024.
It wasn’t until a few weeks before the Games, in July 2024, that WDSF said World Ranking would be used to seed the Paris Olympic participants in the round-robin groups.
Upshot: any WDSF event that happened before Jan. 1, 2023, was not to be included.
Impact: If you stopped taking part early in the qualification cycle, which almost all the top breakers did, you now had to work your way through unbalanced rounds.
Like Victor. The 2023 world champion was seeded eighth of 16.
Or India, the 2022 WDSF European bgirl champion. She was slotted at No. 16, and thus first into a ‘pre-qualifier’ with Maniza Tanash of the Refugee Team, who amid the battle took off her shirt to reveal a blue cape that said, “Free Afghan Women,” a clear violation of the Olympic rule that says no political statements on the field of play, earning Talash an Olympic DQ.
It is 100% true that, as she has said, Raygun won the 2023 Oceania championship.
It is also 100% true that, sparked by the Raygun backlash, the WDSF issued a statement a few days after the Paris Games that, among other things, said, “As part of hip-hop culture, breaking embraces the values of peace, love, unity and having fun.”
That statement did not ask whether, given breaking’s connection to hip-hop, some or a significant part of the backlash involved a lot of white people feeling they suddenly had a free pass to take a whack at black culture. What’s funnier to white people – especially affluent, well-educated white people – than watching someone white do a bad job of trying to act black? Knowing that no one can call you racist because you’re making fun of a white woman? But truth is – you’re mocking black culture?
Raygun at the Olympics // Getty Images
In any regard, sport – and particularly at the Olympics – is about performance. In this context, it assuredly would be helpful to assess Raygun’s No. 1 WDSF World Ranking with her performance at other events in the lead-up to Paris. This is also readily available at the WDSF site:
- 2022 world championships, Korea, 73rd of 114 bgirls
- 2023 Japan World Series, 72nd of 81
- 2023 Spain International Series, 30th of 58
- 2023 world championship, Belgium, 64th of 80
- 2023 Oceania champs, 1st of 15
With these results in mind, these obvious questions to wrap up:
Raygun at No. 1, really – like, how is that remotely defensible? What other sport federation would put a competitor who so clearly is not world best … No. 1?
And since it’s there on the website for everyone to see – what does that say about the federation, its ranking system and, by extension, its governance?
It’s not uncommon for a federation to confront a culture clash. Consider for instance the ski federation when the snowboarders came on board. If the dancesport federation was more traditionally more of a ballroom dancing federation – and long-timers in the Olympic scene can remember an exhibition in a Lausanne hotel room pushing ballroom for the Olympics – it’s not unreasonable to wonder about the fit between breaking and the WDSF. All the same, when a competitor who gets zero points at the Olympics finds herself No. 1 in the federation rankings, why should the world’s other breakers assign legitimacy to much or, for that matter, anything the WDSF might do?
And, more: because breaking is a real sport, and deserves the best it can get, if the WDSF is still in charge – an Olympic future?