By: Amelia Wang
Breakdancing will make its big debut as an Olympic sport this August. The competition will take place in the largest public square in Paris, France. The tickets for the tournament are now completely sold out. However, when breaker Sunny Choi tells strangers that she will be competing in the Olympics, they only laugh dismissively.
It can be very difficult to convince people that breaking, or breakdancing, deserves to be an Olympic sport. “I just have to hope that you see it one day,” Choi tells a TIME reporter, at a coffee shop in Queens, New York, where she’s lived and danced for over a decade.
Breaking, like gymnastics and figure skating, is a judged event. Nobody can say those aren’t sports. Breakers battle head-to-head — there isn’t a point system. Simply put, whoever moves better moves to the next round.
“There’s no doubt in my mind this is a sport,” says Choi, whose first name is actually Sun. Her parents nicknamed her Sunny, and she decided to keep it for her B-girl stage name. “Dance, art, sport,” she says. “All together.”
Choi’s mother and father moved to the U.S. from South Korea, where Choi became a competitive gymnast. “I remember her doing cartwheels as a baby,” says her brother Jin.
One evening, during her freshman year at college, Choi saw members of a breaking club on the campus walkway. They convinced her to come to a class. Choi’s gymnastics experience gave her an advantage. After graduating business school, she started a career as a cosmetics executive. But on the side, she kept breaking, and even competed in international tournaments.
In 2020, breaking was added to the Paris Olympics program. Choi attended a camp for the top U.S. breakers in late 2021, where a coach asked aspiring Olympians to raise their hands. Everybody’s hand went up except Choi’s. Working as an executive full-time while training for the Olympics seemed nearly impossible. “It was a really hard decision,” says Choi.
In July of 2022, she finished second at the World Tournament. After winning the Pan American Games, she qualified for Paris and left her job. “I’m so much happier,” Choi says. “I feel lighter. I have more energy for the things I want to do.”
In total, thirty-two breakers will participate in the tournament in Paris, where Choi is seen as a top contender. “She’s got the high scale aerial power moves,” says Mary Fogarty, who is an associate professor of dance at York University in Toronto, Canada. “Sunny is someone who has enough material to go all the way through.”
However, Choi struggles with self-doubt. Before the Games, she meets with a sports psychologist to work on her mindset. She’ll lift weights with a strength coach and keep a healthy diet to ensure peak performance.
Choi is extremely confident about one thing: If you give breaking a chance, you won’t be disappointed. “You feel our energy,” Choi 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.”
In November 2023, at the Pan American Games in Santiago, Chile, Choi showed off her moves while showing a peace sign to her opponent, B-girl Luma, of Colombia. It seemed as if Choi was saying, “This is mine.”
The judges agreed. The crowd cheered. When Choi was declared the winner, her team piled on top of her.
“What’s so cool about breaking is you get to be authentically you,” Choi says.