By Josh Alston For Daily Mail Australia
02:48 09 Jan 2024, updated 02:48 09 Jan 2024
- Four new sports have been added to Paris Olympics
- One of these new sports features a quirky new rule for the judges
- Aussie medal hope believes it will benefit the sport
One of the newest events at the Paris Olympics will include a very unusual criteria for judges: they will have to get on the floor and dance to prove they understand the sport before they start handing out their scores.
Breaking, sport climbing, skateboarding and surfing are the new sports added to the Paris 2024 menu, with breaking – AKA breakdancing – considered one of the most unusual newcomers.
Breaking beat competitive dances like ballroom and Latin to earn its place in Paris after featuring at the 2018 Youth Olympics.
It was a controversial call that prompted Aussie squash great Michelle Martin to say the Games have become a ‘mockery’ after her sport wasn’t selected.
Now it has been revealed that the judges will need to show their own breaking moves to prove that they understand the novel new Olympic sport – a fact Australian Olympic team’s chef de mission Anna Meares found amusing.
It won’t just be the competitors hitting the dance floor when breaking is contested at the Paris Olympics – judges will have to prove themselves well Rachel ‘Raygun’ Gunn is Australia’s leading medal hope and believes judges proving themselves in breaking will help competitors
‘To be a judge, you actually have to break on the dance floor before the competition starts,’ Meares said.
‘You have to be capable of dancing. Look out for that, the judges will have to break out a few moves as well.
Another big difference will be how the judges interact with the competitors.
The breaking community is tightknit and many of them are lifelong friends, which has led to judges being banned from talking to competitors during previous events.
‘I was in Madrid for a competition this weekend and saw dancers I’ve known for over 20 years. However, I was not able to interact with them until after the competition proceedings,’ World Dance Federation certified judge Maikel Walker said.
Another new element will be the fusion of creativity and stringent rules, which sports must have to be included at the Olympics.
This element has led many to question breaking’s inclusion at the Paris Games because the one-on-one dance battles have previously been judged on creativity alone.
Breaking features at the 2018 Youth Olympics where judges got the chance to apply the Olympic rules and metrics on the sport
It had a trial run at the 2018 Youth Olympics, where five judges assessed competitors on six criteria: creativity, personality, technique, variety, performativity and musicality.
The scoring system assigned different weights to each, with technique, performativity, and creativity accounting for 60 per cent of the total score, while variety, musicality, and personality contributed the remaining 40 per cent.
After each round, judges submitted their votes, and the participant with the highest points was declared the winner.
Walker said he was confident that breaking could be a success even with rules applied.
‘I think that both these worlds can exist in harmony. We have our own platforms that aren’t the Olympics and the rules there are set by the community around them,’ he said.
‘But, for dancers who want to also pursue it as a sporting career as an athlete, there’s also a space for that.’
World Dance Federation certified judge Maikel Walker believes the creative and expressive elements of breaking can combine with the strict rules of the Olympics Walker has been a pioneer for breaking, performing in an exhibition at the Athens games in ’04
Australia’s leading breaking medal hope Rachael ‘Raygun’ Gunn applauded the decision to get judges on the dancefloor.
‘It’s helpful in one way because you see their particular repertoire, their approach,’ she said.
‘There are so many different approaches in breaking; you can really specialise in footwork or you can really specialise in power or you can really specialise in style, so it’s nice to get a sense of who the judges are and the variety or what’s the dominant thing emerging on the panel.
Sometimes that can help you get a sense of what they’re looking for, but also sometimes it doesn’t.’