From breakdancing to skateboarding, the 7 alternative Olympic sports medal-hungry Brits will be hoping to dominate
THERE will be a whole host of different sports on the starting blocks when the Paris Olympics begins on Friday.
Across 18 days of competition, 329 medal events will take place.
But when the first modern games were held in Athens in 1896, there were only medals in 43 events.
This year’s Games sees Breaking (Break Dance) being added to the Olympic line-up, while Skateboarding has been approved to return after first becoming part of the programme in 2020 for the Tokyo Games alongside Sports Climbing and Surfing.
Our Team GB heroes have been thrashing round the athletics track, up and down pools and on the gymnast mats for decades.
And doing it very successfully — remember Daley Thompson, Sebastian Coe, Rebecca Adlington and Beth Tweddle?
This year you may be hoping to see our current crop of world-class Olympians such as gymnast Max Whitlock, sprinter Dina Asher Smith and swimmer Adam Peaty win gold.
But how much do you know about the other less well known sports that make up so much of the Olympics fortnight?
Here’s eight of the most interesting alternatives to watch out for.
Cycling BMX
ANYONE old enough to remember the 1980s will never forget how cool it was to own a BMX.
And thanks to the Olympics, BMX is back in business.
There are two disciplines in the Games, BMX Racing and BMX Freestyle.
Racing is always brilliant to watch with all sorts of twists and turns of drama over the 400m course, while Freestyle has spectacular air, transfer and jump tricks.
Freestyle was added to the Olympic programme for Tokyo 2020 and immediately captured the sporting public’s imagination, with many people describing it as Gymnastics on a Bike.
Columbia’s Mariana Pajon became known as the “Queen of BMX” after back to back racing golds in 2012 and 2016, and in 2020 racer
Dutchman Niek Kimmann won gold despite fracturing his knee in a training run.
It is a remarkable journey for a sport which began in the 1970s as a cycling equivalent of Motocross.
Brits to watch out for:
Kieran Reilly and Charlotte Worthington should both do well.
Sport climbing
IF you have never seen this, it is seriously cool.
Athletes scale artificial walls using fixed hand and foot holds in three disciplines: speed, lead and boulder.
It is an intense mental and physical challenge and it looks amazing on TV.
Watch out for the Speed Race in particular, the competitors look like Spiderman they climb so fast.
In Paris this will be a standalone event with one on one elimination rounds.
Boulder and lead are a combined event.
Boulder requires immense strength and flexibility as the climbers have to scale a 4.5m wall without ropes.
Lead is a timed endurance event in which competitors scale a 15metre wall with ropes.
The height the climber reaches within the time limit, or the height they reach before falling off, determine their points.
Brits to watch out for:
Toby Roberts, Shauna Coxsey, Hamish McArthur and Erin McNeice’
Skateboarding
INVENTED back in the 1950s as a way to keep surfers amused when the waves were flat.
Not many of the early experts could have possibly predicted it would one day become an official Olympic sport.
It has featured some of the youngest competitors in the Games including Great Britain’s Sky Brown who won Bronze at the age of 13.
Skaters are judged on their most impressive tricks with speed, difficulty, execution and style all scoring points.
There are two categories to watch.
Park events are staged on a large bowl shaped concrete course with steep curves enabling skaters to do tricks and soar up to three metres in the air over 45seconds.
Street courses are just as spectacular with skaters using obstacles like rails, stairs, kerbs and benches to perform tricks in 45 seconds.
Hosts Japan won three of the four golds in Tokyo 2020, ensuring a memorable debut.
Brits to watch out for:
Sky is back, now a 16-year-old veteran – alongside team-mates Lola Tambling, Bombette Martin and Andy MacDonald.
Breakdancing
AFTER debuting as a huge success at the Youth Olympics in Buenos Aires in 2018, Breaking is making its full Olympic entrance in Paris.
It started on the streets of New York in the late 1970s, considered as part of the “four elements” of hip-hop, alongside rapping, graffiti and DJing.
In the Olympics version, competitors (known as B-Boys and B-Girls,) go face to face in solo dance battles, adapting their moves to the beat of the DJ’s music.
One breaker performs then their opponent responds hoping to impress the judges who award marks for creativity, personality, technique and variety.
Watch out for “Power Moves,” which include Windmills, the 6-step and Freezes.
They could make the difference between a 4th place finish and gold.
No Brits qualified:
But Lithuania’s Dominika Banevic and America’s Victor Montalvo are the current world champions, so definitely ones to watch.
Athletics
TOKYO witnessed the first Olympic 4x400m mixed relay which was won by the Polish.
The race, with two men and two women competing as one team, was sensational and it is back with a bang for Paris with 16 teams eyeing glory.
Also, keep your eye out for the inaugural edition of the Mixed Relay Race Walking marathon in Paris in which one male and one female team mates complete the marathon distance between them, with the race split into four stages.
Each walker will do two alternate legs, resting while the other is on the circuit.
The International Olympic Committee are fans of mixed gender competition and these events are arguably the highest profile inclusions so far.
Others are sure to follow.
Brits to watch out for:
Callum Wilkinson smashed his own 10,000 race walking record to seal his place in Paris.
Surfing
BACK for its second appearance at the Games after an amazing debut in Toyko, Paris 2024 will be even better.
As there are no big wave locations close to the French capital, the Olympic surfers will actually be competing 10,000 miles away on the French Polynesian Island of Tahiti.
Once out on the South Pacific waters, each surfer has around 30 minutes to catch the best waves possible with each ride marked by a panel of judges.
Competitors are given scores out of ten for each wave they ride and their best two rides count as their final total.
The judges look for the degree of difficulty, innovation, and the variety of the manoeuvres used, along with the surfer’s speed and power.
The first rounds feature four surfers against each other in heats, with the top two advancing to the knockout stages — head to head battles with the loser eliminated.
Ones to watch:
Tahiti native Vahine Fierro learned to surf by the age of two and has the local knowledge to bring back gold.
Aussie Molly Picklum is also a top prospect.
Kayak Cross
FOR the first time we will also see the fast and furious Kayak Cross added to the Olympic Canoeing schedule, having been part of the World Cup programme since 2015.
Kayak Cross (also known as Extreme kayak) is a combination of all four of the white water disciplines and each race will see four paddlers in identical boats drop down a two-metre ramp into the water together, racing simultaneously to the finish line via a series of upstream and downstream gates.
There is even a compulsory 360 degree Eskimo Roll along the way.
Brits to watch out for:
Joe Clarke, Mallory Franklin, Kimberley Woods and Adam Burgess.
Kiteboarding
AFTER a successful trial at the Youth Olympics in 2018, Formula Kite (Kiteboarding,) is about to make its full Olympic Debut in Paris 2024.
Sailing has been an important part of the Olympic programme since 1908 and Team GB are the most successful nation in history.
Yet no-one, not even four-time gold medallist Ben Ainslie, has ever travelled as fast on water as those about to take part in this new discipline which sees them travel at up to 46mph on water.
In this super speedy category, Sailors use a hand-controlled kite to navigate across the water on what looks like a beefed up surfboard.
As is often the case, sailing has its own separate venue for the Games in Paris, with the regatta taking place in the waters off Marseille around 500 miles from the French Capital.
Brits to watch out for:
There is a real girl squad forming here with Ellie Aldridge Jemima Crathorne, Katie Dabson, Maddie Anderson and Lily Young.
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