Judging Breaking At the Olympics Is an Art, Not a Science

Back successful 2017, erstwhile I was watching the breaking battles astatine the Silverback Open successful the suburbs of Philadelphia, a B-boy drew up into a handstand. It’s a basal element, to beryllium sure, but this dancer tweaked it by balancing connected the backmost of his wrists, an innovation that excited the assemblage surrounding the cypher.

As I settled backmost down, I retrieve thinking, however the hellhole bash you people that, an unexpected flip of the wrist, oregon immoderate of the different spontaneous displays of creativity? The substance felt pressing due to the fact that of then-recent developments.

Just a twelvemonth earlier, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had announced that breaking was being added to the roster for the 2018 Youth Olympic Games (YOG), an lawsuit often utilized arsenic a investigating crushed for caller Olympic disciplines, specified arsenic 3-on-3 basketball. If breaking did good successful Buenos Aires, determination was a bully accidental that it would marque the roster for all-ages Olympic Games. And it did bash well, which is wherefore breaking makes its debut successful Paris.

The IOC selected the World DanceSport Federation (WDSF) to shepherd the creation on its Olympic trajectory, an absorbing prime fixed that it had nary anterior narration with breaking oregon the assemblage that created it. The WDSF, champion known for being successful complaint of planetary ballroom creation competition, had astir 2 years to get breaking acceptable for its YOG debut. This meant they besides had 2 years to make and instrumentality an IOC-approved judging system.

At astir battles, particularly the smaller ones, the judging is simply a low-tech affair. There’s an unusual fig of judges and aft everyone is done with their rounds—how galore usually depends connected the signifier of the battle—the judges ballot for the idiosyncratic they deliberation won, usually by pointing. Sometimes 1 of the judges volition transverse his arms successful an X to signify that helium feels that the 2 dancers person tied. This means that they person to bash different round, burning done much vigor (and possibly immoderate moves they might’ve been redeeming for a aboriginal bout) truthful that the undecided justice tin prime a side.

These votes aren’t based connected immoderate hard and accelerated rules; successful fact, traditionally, there’s been nary rulebook astatine all. While determination is simply a wide statement astir immoderate things, specified arsenic biting different B-boy’s moves (don’t bash it) oregon touching your hostile (also don’t bash it) oregon dancing connected bushed (definitely bash that if you perchance can), the judges are usually evaluating the dancers according to the values of the breaking tradition—creativity, style, character, and musicality. It’s up to each idiosyncratic judge, usually dancers oregon erstwhile dancers, however to measurement the antithetic values successful their decision.

This astir apt wasn’t going to chopped it astatine the Olympics.

Fortunately for the WDSF, respective years earlier the IOC’s foray into breaking, members of the assemblage had already started gathering a judging strategy to beryllium utilized astatine large events specified arsenic Battle of the Year. B-boy Niels “Storm” Robitsky, Kevin “Renegade” Gopie, and Dominik Fahr, laminitis of and8.dance, on with a fistful of others, had spent years processing a unified, accordant attack to evaluating breaking, with Fahr processing the level and exertion to enactment it into action. After the YOG announcement, they partnered with the WDSF to good tune their approach, which was utilized astatine the 2018 YOG. In 2022, Gopie, Robitsky, and Fahr stopped moving with the WDSF. Since their departure, the WDSF developed what they’ve called the Olympic judging system, but they didn’t reinvent the wheel. The strategy that volition beryllium utilized successful Paris is an alternate mentation of what Gopie, Robitsky, and Fahr had created.