There are still some sports where you’re not allowed to cry, but breakdancing seems to encourage it.

Canadian Phil Wizard won gold on Saturday. The day before the competition he cried tears of fear. Then he won and cried with happiness. Later he cried with relief.

“I’ve doubted myself my whole life, so being here means a lot to me,” said Wizard, aka Philip Kim.

His victory was Canada’s ninth at these Games and the biggest victory in a summer edition since the boycott of the 1984 Los Angeles Games.

Wizard will be a little different than everyone else. He’s not just the best B-Boy right now, but maybe of all time. Breaking debuted here and there are no plans to repeat it next time. So Wizard has the biggest superlative of all – unique.

At the Olympic Games, breakdancing had two parts – the dance part and the subsequent explanation part.

For example, after the Japanese Hiro10 lost to the American Victor early in the competition. The crowd didn’t like it. They booed. Hiro10 burst into tears. Then a few people in the crowd cried too. This forced Victor – the reigning world champion – to come out and explain what was going on to a group of reporters who didn’t even try to pretend to understand anything they were seeing.

“He’s very physical,” Victor said. “But I’m more original.”

Okay, but what about the booing?

“I understand the booing,” said Victor, who was burning with patience. “They booed because they don’t understand breaking.”

Not understanding breaking is one of the real secrets of breaking, because breakdancers are happy to explain it to you. Cole notes: It’s not just about funky freshness and spinning around on the floor. There are subtleties.

One thing was easy to understand – the fans in Paris loved breakdancing. This was the first event I’d been to where there were as many people standing outside the arena watching as there were inside.

Every venue here in Paris is busy, but the X-Games theme park they built at Place de la Concorde is buzzing. Maybe it’s because none of it is covered. Everyone seems a little bit crazy.

Breaking takes this idea of ​​confusion to its aesthetic extreme. It feels like this is what would happen if you let Zoolander run the Olympics.

The exaggerated greetings, the MCs screaming during the competition, the middle-aged DJs being homaged by great conductors, the Dance namesthe judges on the podiums, some of whom were inexplicably wearing Kangol fur hats in the middle of a heat warning. Each competitor enters the ring like a heavyweight champion and leaves it like one.

If you watched anyone here long enough – a fan, a security guard, a person in a mascot uniform – they would eventually start rocking out to the music like breakdancers do. It’s called toprocking. We’re all susceptible to it.

To enjoy it, you need a strong appetite for kitsch and, as Victor called it, “an appreciation for the new, evolved breaking.”

You may remember breakdancing from when you still wore Adidas lace-up shoes? Not developed further.

The star of the first night of the competition, however, was Rachael “Raygun” Gunn, a 36-year-old Australian university lecturer who teaches “the cultural politics of breakdancing.”

Let’s just say that she may be better in theory than in practice. She was thrashed by the jury but became a viral sensation.

As for the men, most of the participants are professionals who travel all over the world. They all say they are good friends, and maybe they are even telling the truth.

As Wizard was speaking in the middle of the competition, the Frenchman he would later defeat in the gold medal match walked by and touched him on the shoulder. Wizard spun like a top.

“Well done, brother! Respect! Let’s go!”

Wizard is the kind of person who speaks with exclamation marks.

You don’t see that in the professional world, well, in any. The professionals respect each other, but they don’t trust each other. The other one is trying to steal your lunch out of your mouth.

Breaking is in a different position – it needs growth. That means it needs more evangelists than champions. The result is a flat hierarchy and lots of long hugs.

This growth will not be achieved in the long term by the Olympic Games. The organizers of Los Angeles 2028 have already refused to include the sport on the calendar. Perhaps it will be resurrected in Brisbane in 2032, but that is unlikely.

“The Olympics are not the be-all and end-all,” Wizard said. “I’m sad that it’s just a one-time event, but I’m optimistic about the future. I think people will fall in love with breakdancing.”

This was their chance. About 10 hours over two days, squeezed in at the end of the games when people start to get tired. Was that enough to make an impression? The result will only be seen in a few years.

As someone who has now acquired a sophisticated understanding of the sport after three, maybe four hours of study, I am also sad. There are not many sports where, after five minutes of spinning on their heads, the participants come out and start talking as if they were quoting the Tao Te Ching.

For example, Victor on the subject of Phil Wizard: “He is incredible. He reminds me of myself.”

Like Wizard, Victor said he was more focused on conversion than personal achievements here. He won a bronze medal and seemed genuinely excited. Afterward, he came back to try and convert some new disciples.

How should we understand this new, further developed fracture?

“Just pay attention,” Victor said, speaking slowly as if he were talking to children. “Of course you’ll get the gist.”

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