Guide to new events at the Summer Games

With one sport making its Olympic debut and three sports making their second appearance, here’s a look at what to expect when it comes to the new events at Paris 2024.

BREAKING

Most of us know it as “breakdancing” and its inclusion is in line with the awareness of the IOC of bringing in more youthful interest to the Games.

The style of dance has evolved through the decades into a competitive sport with a stringent judging system that scores on creativity, personality, technique, variety, performativity and musicality.

At Paris 2024, 16 men (B-Boys) and 16 women (B-Girls) will compete in a round robin followed by knockouts and medal battles. Each battle will have a best-of-three contest.

The athletes don’t know the music that will be played ahead of time. They need to improvise their movement to the beat.

Look out for the likes of Domenika Banevic from Lithuania and Victor Montalvo from Team USA. They are the current world champions and will have targets on their backs going into the inaugural Olympic competition.

SURFING

While surfing will be an event at Paris 2024, it won’t be in Paris. It will take place on the island of Tahiti in French Polynesia which is known for its testing waves.

Scoring is done by five judges on a scale of one to ten. For each wave, the highest and lowest scores from the judges are discarded and the average is taken from the remaining three scores.

The scoring criteria are degree of difficulty, innovative and progressive manoeuvres, variety of manoeuvres, combinations as well as speed, power and flow.

Brazilian Italo Ferreira won the first men’s gold medal at Tokyo 2020 but won’t defending his title. American Carissa Moore was the women’s gold medallist and will be competing again in Paris.

Surfing provided South Africa with one of their three medals in Tokyo with Bianca Buitendag coming home with silver. She won’t be competing at these Games but the nation will be represented by Jordy Smith who missed out on competing at the last Games through injury.

SKATEBOARDING

Skateboarding returns after making a popular debut at Tokyo 2020 with the home nation dominating the showing their dominance by winning three out of a possible four gold medals.

Just like in the previous games, there are two categories to compete in, namely street and park.

Each street skater will take two 45-second runs. Park skaters will be given an extra 45-second run.

In the street category, each athlete’s best run and two best tricks will be counted to their score. Each is scored on a scale of 0-100 based on difficulty, variety and execution.

In the park category, only the highest-scoring single run will be considered. This is also scored on a 0-100 scale but this time it’s based on height, difficulty, variety as well as speed through the course.

Australian Keegan Palmer and Sakura Yosozumi of Japan are the two park gold medallists from Tokyo who will be defending their titles. Aya Aseqas will be representing Africa in Paris with the Moroccan competing in the women’s park discipline.

The Japanese pair of Yuto Horigome and Momiji Nishiya were the winners of the street category in Tokyo.

SPORT CLIMBING

Sport climbing returns with a new format that double the medals from those that were handed out in Paris.

The event has now been split into a speed event plus a bouldering and lead combined event. In Tokyo, all of these were combined to form a medal event.

When it comes to bouldering, the athletes are presented with multiple walls and much get to the finish point of as many of them as possible within a time limit. For lead, the athletes must try to reach the highest point possible in six minutes.

The speed event is straightforward with the athletes climbing up a 15m wall racing for time.

South Africa will be well represented in the sport by the likes of Mel Janse van Rensburg, Lauren Mukheibir, Aniya Holder and Joshua Bruyns.