In the arena built on Concorde square, competitions are held in skating, BMX cycling, breaking and 3×3 basketball.
Paris Olympics on channels 26.7.–11.8. Go to the competition website here.
PARIS. In front of the Palais de Tokyo art museum in Paris is one of the most famous skate spots in the world, where dozens of enthusiasts have gathered on a hot afternoon.
The approaching Olympics are, along with tricks, one of the main topics of discussion for skaters. In the opinion of many enthusiasts, skateboarding should remain outside of competition and prestigious competitions.
– Previously, I also thought that skating was not suitable as an Olympic sport. However, I changed my mind when I saw skaters for the first time at the Tokyo Olympics. The sport fit there well and the artistic side was taken into account, says the one doing tricks on his board Fiona Torello.
The Olympics have raised the status of street sports
Paris is a mecca for street artists, because the city has many iconic filming locations and structures where you can do many kinds of tricks. The French authorities, on the other hand, have a strict attitude towards enthusiasts: for example, skateboarding or breaking on the streets are not always tolerated.
– Attitudes have changed for the better with the Olympics. New skate spots have been built in Paris and we are not being rushed so hard, says Torello, who moved to Paris from Barcelona.
Urban sports now get the arena they deserve, when the Olympic championships of skateboarding, BMX cycling, breaking and 3×3 basketball are contested at the famous Concorde square. From the grandstand you can see, for example, the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre and the French Parliament, and it can accommodate 25,000 people.
Skating is contested in the street and in the park, with a total of 88 skaters participating. The judges evaluate each skater’s “run” with points from 1 to 100. Points are awarded for the height, difficulty, speed, versatility and smoothness of the tricks.
The only Finnish representative Heili Sirviö will compete in the women’s park, which will be held on Tuesday, August 6.
From the Bronx to the Paris Olympics
Among street sports, breaking has been in the headlines in particular. The street sport, born in the 1970s in the Bronx, New York, is participating in the Olympics for the first time, which divides the opinions of Parisian enthusiasts.
– Getting to the Olympics brings awareness to our sport, but on the other hand, it highlights only one side of the breaking culture: a kind of Olympic version. Hip hop culture and many other dimensions are left aside, says Owen Mugiraneza, aka B-boy Owen Kristie, who practices breaking in a Parisian gym.
In his opinion, scoring a break is particularly problematic.
– Breikkaus operates on an emotional level. Experience is personal and cannot be evaluated in numbers, Mugiraneza alias Owen Kristie says.
Acrobatics and Flow
In the break, men’s (B-boys) and women’s (B-girls) sports compete. The format of the competition is a battle, where two dancers compete against each other by doing dance moves to the DJ’s rhythm.
Competitors are evaluated according to the difficulty of their movement sets, which include e.g. impressive windmills and sudden stops, i.e. freezes. Also important is the dancer’s flow, i.e. the merging of the movements with the rhythm of the music.
The winner advances to the next round and finally the two strongest breakers of the games meet in the final. Breaking will be competed on August 9 and 10.
– Breaking is an extremely physical sport, so I think it’s natural that the judges evaluate the difficulty of the moves. says Bruno “Fada” Ribeiro, who has been involved in breaking for 15 years.
– Let’s see how it goes – whether the break culture will change as a result of the Olympics. I’m on the waiting list and I hope the judges know their job, says Frederica Miani, whose B-girl name is Mia.