Sunny Choi will be among the athletes on Team USA’s first Olympic breakdancing team headed to Paris later this summer.
The 35-year-old Tennessee native is unlike most Olympians.
Choi was a gymnast growing up and committed to a Division 1 school to compete in gymnastics, but she was forced out due to knee injuries. Trying to just stay active while attending the University of Pennsylvania, Choi came upon a few people who were breakdancing on campus. She was signed up by a few recruiters looking for more participants in their club, and it stuck from there.
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U.S. Olympic athlete Sunny Choi poses for a photo at the USOC Media Summit in preparation for the Paris 2024 Olympic Summer Games at Mariott Marquis in New York City on April 16, 2024. (Robert Deutsch-USA TODAY Sports)
“Initially, it was just being upside down and the physical challenges of breaking that I really fell in love with, but what really kept me was the community and the creative aspect, and it challenged me in ways that I wasn’t challenged in the rest of my life and I felt like I was really growing a lot through it,” Choi told Fox News Digital in a recent interview.
Choi, who is known as a “B-Girl” in her sport, said she never had any inclination to be an Olympian. She said she was working a corporate job at Estée Lauder and still practicing four to six days a week.
“I was breaking on the side of working corporate until I decided to really make the jump, really take the leap and go for the Olympics. And at that point, I quit my job.”
Choi said she never thought breaking would ever be in the Olympics – but not for the lack of fitting in.
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Sunny Choi performs a breakdance routine during a Panasonic press event at CES 2023 at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center on Jan.4, 2023 in Las Vegas. (David Becker/Getty Images)
“It’s not that it doesn’t fit in, but it’s kind of the rawness of breaking didn’t match the image in my head of what the Olympics was, which is like very elegant and refined,” Choi explained to Fox News Digital. “You think of things like gymnastics and track and breaking has this kind of street energy that you don’t really have in the Olympics.
“So when they told me (breaking would be in the Olympics), I was like, no way. And then it actually took me quite a long time before I finally committed and then quit my job a little bit later.”
Breakdancing, better known as breaking, is making its Olympics debut. The competition runs over the course of two days (Aug. 9 and 10). The performer will be scored based on the various combinations of dance moves as a DJ plays music.
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Choi won a silver medal in the 2022 World Games and a gold medal in the Pan American Games last year. Victor Montalvo, Jeffery Louis and Logan “Logistx” Edra are on the breaking team with Choi as well.
Choi told Fox News Digital she is going through a lot of emotions in the weeks leading up to the Olympics, more anxious right now about going through the next steps to prepare for the event.
B-Girl Sunny Choi celebrates with her gold medal after the Breaking For Gold USA regional competition at Industria on April 22, 2023 in the Williamsburg neighborhood of the Brooklyn borough of New York City. (Elsa/Getty Images)
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“I’m really excited that breaking is going to be included in the Olympics for the first time, and I’m really excited for the culture and the community and the added exposure and, hopefully, kind of the boom in popularity for breaking post-Games,” she told Fox News Digital. And so, that’s going to be great. But like for me, not yet.”
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