For the first time, breakdancing is an Olympic event. Bridge and cheerleading have long been candidates. What turns a pastime into a sport? An obstacle course through the thicket of a term.
It is fun to take a quick look at the breakdancers as they perform rapid dance steps to the thumping bass, stand on one hand and do somersaults. On the street or in a square, such as the Place de la Concorde in Paris. But there is more at stake there: for the first time, “breaking” has become an Olympic discipline. We start to ponder: how does an artistic attraction for pedestrian zones rise to the Olympus of sport? We open the list of sports whose associations are recognised by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which means they are eligible for its games. And as laypeople, we are quite amazed: billiards? Skittles? Boules, the pastime of Mediterranean pensioners? Cheerleading, which we know as waving with pom-poms to cheer on real athletes? Chess, where you rack your brains but hardly lift a finger? And even – we rub our eyes in disbelief – bridge? We have to pass on that.
