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U.S. Breakers Sunny Choi and Logan Edra Make Their Olympic Debut in New Sport
“Look at Sunny taking it in, playing to the crowd," said an NBC announcer during one Choi's Olympic battles. "Her smile is infectious.”
Breaking, aka breakdancing, had a memorable debut as an Olympic event at the Paris Games on Frida.
Team USA B-girls Sunny Choi and Logan Edra, in a heartbreaking development, were eliminated from the competition early on.
The competition launched with a round-robin contest of four groups of four breakers. Each breaker went two rounds against the other three competitors in their group. The top two B-Girls in each group, as determined by who won the most rounds, advanced to the quarterfinals, USA Today reported.
After the head-spinning and gravity-defying moves like the top rock, down rock, and freeze were over in the round-robin, Choi and Edra each ranked third in their respective groups, meaning they would not advance to the next round.
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Sunny Choi’s Olympic breaking
Choi, 35, is a Nashville native who goes by B-Girl Sunny when she breaks. In Paris, Choi was bested by breakers from India and China, but she defeated the B-girl from Portugal.
Though Choi was disappointed to be missing out on the next round of battles, she said she can't even be "salty" about it. "I had a lot of fun,” Sunny reflected, per USA Today.
Choi became the first American woman to qualify for breaking at the 2024 Olympics by winning the Pan American Games in November 2023.
Logan Edra’s Olympic breaking
Edra, a 21-year-old from Chula Vista, California, breaks as B-Girl Logistx. Team USA’s youngest breaker, Edra faced off against “two of the clear contenders for medals,” reported USA Today.
Logistx lost her battle to one of them, Lithuania, and split rounds against the other, France. In the end, it was last dance for Edra.
"It was definitely one of those, ‘Damn, they might be the hardest battles of the whole bracket,’” Logistx said of the competition, according to USA Today.
Breaking at the Olympics for the first time
The roots of breaking reach back five decades to the Bronx. Since then the actiity has evolved into a global phenomenon. The journey to the Olympics began with its inclusion in the 2018 Youth Olympic Games in Buenos Aires, where it gained widespread acclaim.
The Paris Games mark the Olympic debut. The sport is judged and scored based on five categories: technique, vocabulary, execution, musicality, and originality, NBC Insider reported.
During the round-robin, a comentator took note of the upbeat energy and joy Sunny brings to breaking. In an NBC Olympics & Paralympics post on X, formerly Twitter, the announcer said, “Look at Sunny taking it in, playing to the crowd. Her smile is infectious.”
