Breakdancing Got a Lot of Buzz at the Paris Games — Why Isn't It Returning for the Next Olympics?

It came, it saw, it ... spawned a lot of memes?

We're talking about breaking (aka breakdancing) at the Olympics, of course. It made its debut at the 2024 Summer Olympic Games in Paris, and thanks to Rachael "Raygun" Gunn's performance, it got a lot of people talking. Maybe not in the nicest way, though.

So why isn't breaking going to be featured at the next summer Olympics in 2028, when L.A. hosts the games? Wouldn't they want to capitalize on all the buzz around it from Paris?

Apparently, it's not as simple as just deciding at the last minute that they'd want to take advantage of something that got people talking at the last games.

In fact, a host city has to choose its sports years in advance.

Host cities collaborate with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to determine which sports to include in addition to the "core" event program. For L.A., they decided on adding flag football, squash, baseball/softball, cricket, and lacrosse — the first two making their Olympics debut.

And speaking of Olympic debuts, it can take a long time for a sport to make it the games. It has to go through the IOC and then the International Sports Federation, both of which have their own various rules, and it also has to comply with the Olympic Charter and the World Anti-Doping Code.

And in order to manage all these sports, the IOC adopted a policy in recent years of permitting new sports only in conjunction with dropping other sports.

But don't worry — sports can rejoin the Olympics even after they've been dropped. We're seeing that with the L.A. games, which are bringing back baseball/softball, cricket, and lacrosse.

So does that mean we might see breaking again one day at a future Olympic games? Hey, you never know!