LOS ANGELES — Breaking made its Olympic debut in Paris to cheers and perhaps a bit of confusion, but fans shouldn't get used to seeing b-boys and b-girls on the Olympic stage.
Will breaking be part of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics?
Breaking is not in the lineup of sports for the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028, and leaders of the sport think it's unlikely to make it into the events for Brisbane in 2032. It all comes down to funding, according to Zack Slusser, vice president of Breaking for Gold USA and USA Dance.
“It was a miracle that we were even in Paris to begin with,” he said. But for the breaking community, it’s an achievement worth celebrating, even if it doesn’t return to the Olympic stage.
In the end, breakers from the U.S. and around the world are hoping their debut at the Olympics leads to visibility and more resources for the breaking community through stakeholders and financial gains.
“The amount of exposure to the right people that can bring real change to our community, to our platform to help it grow — it’ll be significant to us. It’ll allow us, for the first time, to find sustainability and help us elevate our platform,” Slusser said.
“It would be great to see breaking make it back to the Olympic Games again. But at the same time, it’s really going to go back to community work and leveraging this opportunity internally.”
New and returning sports at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics
While there was no room for breaking in the 2028 program, there will be five sports that were not featured at the Paris Olympics:
- Cricket
- Flag football
- Baseball and softball
- Lacrosse
- Squash
Flag football and squash are first-time Olympic sports. Cricket returns to Olympic status for the first time since 1900, lacrosse hasn't been played at the Olympics since 1908, and baseball and softball were dropped from the Olympics after 2008, but made a one-off appearance at the Tokyo Games.
Changes at the 2028 Olympics
Modern pentathlon was on the chopping block, but retained its place by replacing the horse jumping event with obstacle course racing.
Boxing has been assured of being on the program in Los Angeles, but the sport is currently without a governing body recognized by the IOC.
RELATED: Breakaway boxing body's president backs the IOC's handling of gender issues at the Paris Olympics
The Associated Press contributed to this story.