By: Elaine Xu

Breakdancing (or breaking) will become an official competition in the Olympics this year in Paris. The judging for Breaking is like it is for gymnastics, but with head-to-head battles instead of points. The person with the best moves wins the round.

Sunny Choi, 35, is a break dancer. Her hometown is in the Nashville suburb of Cookeville, which is in Texas. Her parents are Kyung-Ju Choi and Jung-In Choi. They are Korean immigrants who immigrated to the United States in the 1970s.

Choi first became a competitive gymnast and was great at the sport. Then, one day, as a freshman in college, she encountered a college breakdancing club, and they persuaded her to join. Her gymnastics background helped her a lot. Even after Choi graduated college, she continued to practice every day.

When breaking became an Olympic sport, a coach from a camp that she attended in late 2021 challenged Choi to train for the Olympics.

Torn between her demanding career, full-time as Estée Lauder’s director of global creative operations for skin care, and an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, Choi made her decision after an amazing second-place finish at the World Games: she was going to the Olympics! In 2022, she left her job, and by 2023, she had qualified for the Olympics in Paris by winning the Pan American Games.

Choi struggles with self-doubt. To help her self-doubt and tackle the Olympic Games even better, she’ll work with a sports psychologist and a strength coach while maintaining a healthy diet.

Choi encourages everyone to try breaking. “You feel our energy,” she says. “You feel the excitement, you feel the happiness or the anger or whatever emotion that the dancer is expressing in that moment. It’s so visceral and raw. I don’t think you get that anywhere else.”