Artistic Expression or Athletic Feat?
Written by: Morgan Bernard
Paris 2024
Surfing, Skating, Climbing, and Other Fringe Action Sports Take Center Stage at the Paris Olympics
Once considered more counterculture than sport, surfing, skateboarding, rock climbing, and breakdancing are now Olympic sports, with athletes competing in this year’s Paris Olympics. Surfing, skateboarding, and climbing made their Olympic debuts in 2021 at the Tokyo Olympics and are now returning to completion in Paris, with breakdancing making its Olympic debut.
Despite the widespread acceptance of these activities as mainstream sports, their own communities of weekend warriors and dedicated practitioners have mixed feelings about their inclusion in the pinnacle of athletic competition.
Paris Olympics 2024
Paris Olympics 2024
How Are New Sports Added to the Olympics?
New Olympic Sports are added to the Olympics by the International Olympic Committee, AKA the IOC, from a selection of sports governed by International Federations (IFs) recognized by the IOC. To be considered, sports must comply with the Olympic Charter, the World Anti-Doping Code, and the Olympic Movement Code on the Prevention of the Manipulation of Competition. Sports that meet these requirements can petition the IOC for inclusion. As of the 2021 Tokyo Games, the Organizing Committee of a specific Olympic Games edition may propose sports for inclusion to the IOC. The Tokyo Organizing Committee was the first Organizing Committee to propose new sports, which resulted in the addition of five sports to the Tokyo Olympic Games: surfing, karate, sports climbing, skateboarding, and baseball/softball.
Break dancing
Break dancing
Baseball Softball
From Counterculture to Mainstream
While Surfing, skateboarding, climbing, and breaking are all seemingly unrelated, each sport was once looked down upon by mainstream athletics and society as a whole at one point or another in their respective histories. Surfers are often depicted in pop culture as lazy, tan beach bums. Skaters are at constant odds with law enforcement for the mere practice of their sport. Climbers are viewed as notorious van-dwelling dirtbags. Breakdancing was born in the heart of the Bronx when the borough was considered one of the toughest neighborhoods in the country. Now, each sport has an international federation, highly competitive leagues and world tours, and athletes that will compete on the world stage in the Paris 2024 Olympic games.
Rock Climbing
Skate boarding
Rock Climbing
Skate boarding
Surfing
Artistic Expression or Athletic Competition
Despite the excitement surrounding the addition of new sports in the Olympics, many criticize the inclusion of these so-called action sports, and the loudest voices of criticism are coming from within the sport’s own communities. To many in these respective communities, activities like surfing, skating, climbing, and breaking are not sports but forms of artistic expression and ways of life. Those individuals staunchly resist the “sportification” of their livelihoods and see Olympic inclusion as a degradation of their passions. Many of these critics aren’t just participants but top athletes in their sports or respected members of the culture. Additionally, to many, activities like climbing and surfing are more about communing with nature than they are about competition. While competitive climbing and surfing exist and even thrive, 99% of surfers and climbers don’t compete in any way. Writing for Climbing Magazine during the Tokyo Games, Corey Buhay said, “The Games seemed too clean, too organized, too commercial to ever accept climbing and for likewise that climbers would never accept it.”
Surfing
When asked about the possibility of surfing’s Olympic inclusion by Surfer Magazine in 2015, surf journalist Sean Doherty said, “No, no and err…no. Olympic sports are all anchored around fairness and level playing fields, but the ocean doesn’t offer that. The only way surfing would ever be considered an Olympic sport is if it was held in wave pools, and if it was held in wave pools then I wouldn’t consider it surfing. The fact that no two waves are ever the same is what makes surfing, surfing. It’s not designed to be fair…” For surfers, skaters, and the like, part of the sport’s appeal is its uniqueness. Surfing, skating, climbing, and breakdancing are cool because they’re not baseball or football. They’re practiced by a select few who dedicate their lives to the craft and exist in a community. When speaking on the inclusion of skateboarding in the Olympics, Ian Michna, the publisher of Jenkem Magazine, a skateboarding and culture magazine, said, “I think as a community, people were attracted to skateboarding because it was not part of something like the Olympics; it was not mainstream… Now with skateboarding becoming commodified by the Olympics and them turning it into a sport with numbers and statistics and putting values on ‘tricks’ and things that were genuinely once just movements of expression, some people are going to say, ‘This is not in the spirit of skating.'”
Break dancing
Break dancing
Karate
If any of the new additions to the games can make the argument for artform over athletics, it’s breaking. Breaking, AKA breakdancing, was born in the Bronx in the seventies and has come in and out of cultural relevance in recent decades. While there is no denying the level of elite athleticism required to perform advanced breakdancing maneuvers, there’s also no denying that dance is performance art— and simplifying it to strict, universal judging criteria diminishes the expressiveness of that art. While writing for Dazed, James Greigh points out that breakdancing was considered part of the “four elements of hip hop, alongside rapping, graffiti, and DJ-ing.” As a product of the Bronx, breaking’s first practitioners were typically Black and Puerto Rican youth. While the dance has evolved significantly and become increasingly athletic, even drawing parallels to gymnastics, it retains strong cultural ties to hip-hop, the Bronx, and the culture it was born out of. With its rapid mainstream acceptance and inclusion in this year’s Olympic Games, “some fear that the practice risks losing its counter-cultural edge and becoming divorced from its hip-hop roots.”
No matter where your opinions lie on the issue, it will be hard for lovers of these sports to turn a blind eye as the best of the best take the world stage. As a lifelong surfer who has used surfing as a lens to see the world, create art, and connect with others, I’m not sure how I feel about its inclusion in the Olympics. However, I know I won’t be able to look away when the world’s top surfers paddle is out in Teahupo’o, Tahiti, in French Polynesia. 
