What's Hot in Paris: Looking ahead to the 2028 Olympic Games
(NEXSTAR) — With only a few days left of the 2024 Paris Olympics, the What's Hot in Paris team took a look ahead at the next summer Olympics, being held in Los Angeles in 2028.
On Friday's livestream, J.B. Biunno, of Nexstar's WFLA, and Olympic champion Brooke Bennett were joined by Olympic swimmer Janet Evans, who is a member of the host committee for the 2028 Games in L.A.
Evans competed in several Olympic Games, breaking world records in 1987 in the 400m, 800m, and 1500m freestyle events. Between 1986 and 1995, the swimmer won 25 out of 27 major international races.
J.B. and Brooke also took a look back at some memorable moments from the Paris Olympics.
What's Hot in Paris was a daily livestream which ran each weekday over the course of the 2024 Olympics. Watch their final episode in the video player above.
In other Olympic news, teenage sprinter Quincy Wilson’s first run at the Olympics on Friday was a learning lesson, and break dancing finally takes the Olympic stage.
The 16-year-old, who became the youngest American male to compete in track at the Olympics, left the U.S. in a distant seventh place after his opening lap in the first round of the 4x400 relay. The Americans, normally dominant in this event, needed a rally from Christopher Bailey on the final lap simply to qualify for the final. The team finished third in a time of 2 minutes, 59.15 seconds.
The journey of Olympic breaking was a long one that began with a vision — one that early pioneers of the art form in the 1970s in the Bronx hardly dreamed of.
The 33 breakers representing 15 countries and the Refugee Olympic Team will make their debut Friday and Saturday, vying for gold for the first time in Olympic history. The b-girls will be the first to battle each other, one-by-one, first through a round-robin phase. They’ll follow rules based on the Trivium judging system, which asks judges to evaluate breakers on their technique, vocabulary or variety, execution, musicality and originality.
Like gymnastics, breakers have certain moves and tricks they work to land with precision and focus, but they’ll also need to emphasize their style, personality and individuality as they sync to the beat of the DJ's soundtrack.
The elements of style and individuality play out from what the dancers wear, to their “signature moves,” to their b-boy or b-girl names themselves. No other Olympic sport has the structure of identifying the competitors this way, but it’s a part of preserving the culture and essence of hip-hop in the art form, said Zack Slusser, vice president of Breaking for Gold USA and USA Dance.
“People coming into breaking need to understand that there’s a history here of expression, especially from where it comes from,” said Slusser. Hip-hop was born as a youth culture within Black and brown communities in the Bronx as a way to escape strife and socio-economic struggles and make a statement of empowerment at a time when they were labeled as lost, lawless kids by New York politicians.
The Associated Press contributed to this report