Fact Check: Breakdancing Won't Be Part of 2028 Los Angeles Olympics?

Claim:

Breakdancing won't be included as an event at the 2028 Los Angeles summer Olympic Games.

Rating:

True ( About this rating? )

Context:

The announcement came prior to the 2024 Paris Olympics, and the exclusion was unrelated to breakdancing's showing at those games.

In the final days of the 2024 Paris Olympics, breakdancing, or breaking, made a viral debut on the Olympic scene. The new event's virality was spawned, at least in part, by an Australian breaker — "Raygun" — whose performance scored zero points :

Following the closing ceremony of the Paris games, the claim that breakdancing would not be included in the Los Angeles summer Olympics in 2028 received widespread coverage in television , print , and social media .

It's true that breakdancing will not be an event at the 2028 Los Angeles games. But it is inaccurate to say it was "removed" because of, or that its absence is related to, events in Paris. Breaking was never proposed as an event in L.A., and the L.A. Olympic committee's proposed schedule was released in October 2023 .

Breakdancing was first announced as an Olympic event in December 2020 , after successfully being included in the 2018 Youth Olympic Games in Buenos Aires. Events are continuously added and removed from the Olympic program in order to keep it relevant . As described by Encyclopedia Britannica, some sports that don't make the cut one year may come back in later years, while others are lost to time:

Tug-of-war, for example, was once a respected Olympic sport. Polo, power boating, rackets, roque, and waterskiing were all once part of the Olympic Games but have been discontinued over the years, while cricket and lacrosse are among the sports that were dropped but later reinstated.

In October 2023, the Los Angeles Olympic committee voted to approve an events program that did not include breakdancing, but that did include five new events : cricket, flag football, baseball and softball, lacrosse and squash.

While this schedule has not yet been ratified by the IOC — that won't happen until 2025 — it is likely that any future changes to the program would be the removal of events, as the L.A. plan already goes over the allowed limit for athletes, per Washington Post :

The five new sports plus weightlifting, modern pentathlon and boxing cause L.A. 28 to blast past the IOC's limit of 10,500 total athletes for summer Games, a fact IOC leaders conceded late last week when pushing the new program forward for Monday's vote. Some disciplines inside current summer sports could be removed and the athlete cap tweaked before the Los Angeles schedule is finalized in 2025.

Some online speculated that negative press around breakdancing's debut at the Paris Olympics doomed the event from being included in the L.A. program. Because those decisions predate the Paris games, they were misguided.

However, because it is factual that breakdancing has not been proposed as an event in the 2028 Olympic program, the claim that it will not be a part of those games is "True."

Sources:

Goh, Z. K. "Breaking and Three Other Sports Confirmed for Paris 2024." Olympics.Com, 7 Dec. 2020, https://olympics.com/en/news/breaking-sport-climbing-surfing-skateboarding-paris-2024 .

How Are Sports Chosen for the Olympics? | Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/story/how-are-sports-chosen-for-the-olympics . Accessed 13 Aug. 2024.

"New Events Catch the Eye in Sochi - Olympic News." Olympics.Com, 10 Feb. 2014, https://olympics.com/en/news/new-events-catch-the-eye-in-sochi .

Shapiro, Courtney. "Breakdancing Won't Be Included in the 2028 Olympics: What's Taking Its Place and How Competitors Feel." Woman's World, 12 Aug. 2024, https://www.womansworld.com/entertainment/breakdancing-removed-from-2028-olympics-summer-games-update .

Squash, Cricket, Lacrosse and Flag Football Proposed for Olympics 2028 - The Washington Post. 6 Jan. 2024, https://web.archive.org/web/20240106092814/https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2023/10/09/2028-olympics-cricket-flag-football-lacrosse/.