They're Breakdance Fighting! New Sport Debuts At Youth Olympics

“The Youth Summer Olympics are in full swing this month down in Argentina,” Kate typed confidently even though she just now discovered that’s even a thing… And in a new event on the scene, “b-boy Bumblebee of Russia” took home Gold over Japan.

In a pretty neat story from the Olympics site:

Sergei Chernyshyov sparked a peaceful revolution in Voronezh, a provincial town 500 kilometres from Moscow, when he started teaching breakdance to local kids at the end of the 1990s. Back then, with no opportunity to travel, Chernyshev pored over video cassettes of foreign dancers to study their moves, and later tested them out on the dance floor.

At Buenos Aires 2018, the name of the man from a little-known Russian province was written in the history books of his beloved sport as his son B-Boy Bumblebee – whose real name is also Sergei Chernyshyov – became the first breakdance gold medalist at an Olympic event.

“To say what this means to me in two words – it’s the meaning of my life,” said the medallist’s father and coach. “I have been waiting for this Olympic debut for a long time.”

In 2016 the International Olympic Committee voted to add breakdance to the 2018 games along with karate & sport climbing. Continuing its effort to build youth engagement in the Olympic movement, the three new sports reflect a mix of up & coming and universal sports that appeal to a younger base. Personally I’d like to see a combination of all three together and imagine it would look something like this with some boulders thrown in:

The USA has participants in the triathlon, rugby 7s, fencing, swimming, tennis, golf, 3×3 basketball, beach volleyball, artistic gymnastics, archery and a category simply called ‘athletics’ which I’m not quite sure about. I was a little bummed to see that we didn’t have anyone in the dance fighting circuit this year but if I ever have kids I know what I’ll make my main cause as a tiger mom.