Breakdancing beats Olympic football for me as Paris fever starts

Try to remain calm, but we’ve only got a year to figure out our freeze from our air flare. Just 365 days to distinguish between a top rock and a bottom rock. Is there a middle rock? Anyone, is there a middle rock?! I need to lie down.

Sorry, the last thing I want to do is cause widespread panic but this is the sporting reality we face.

This week marked a year until the 2024 Olympic Games, set to take place in Paris, France, making it only the second city ever to complete a modern-day hosting hat-trick, with London doing it first in 2012.

And that’s why I’m already trying to learn the rules of competitive breakdancing.

In simple terms, it’s a one-on-one battle, so think films like Step Up, Stomp The Yard and Take the Lead, only with medals and national anthems. I think if we watch all of those movies back-to-back, we’ll get through this together.

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Actually, as a child of the eighties, without wishing to sound arrogant, I reckon I could still pull off an impressive crab walk, although a semi-decent windmill would likely put me in traction.

I know, it’s weird that I’m writing about something a year away, but while this sporting summer has the Ashes at home, the unsocial kick-off times, coupled with work commitments, puts the bulk of the Women’s World Cup a little out of reach to many.

I don’t mind a 9am start this morning for England, but 5.30am on Sunday for South Korea versus Morocco is out of the question.

It sounds a little unsexy to be writing about time zones but, as a soon to be 47-year-old, Paris 2024 will only be the fifth summer Olympics of my lifetime that, give or take an hour or two, fits roughly into our usual schedules, and there won’t be another one until 2036 at the earliest. I won’t even be able to do the robot by then.

This week was full of announcements, with details of a show-stopping opening ceremony along six kilometres of the Seine revealed, and that addition of ‘breaking’ has caught a lot of headlines.

It’s important, however, we resist the temptation to turn into old curmudgeons, bleating on about simpler times and bemoaning change, because the reality is that’s not the case. Instead, it is just incremental modernisation.

The traditional heart of the Games remains, with the core 28 familiar sports set in stone.

Although, don’t get me started on the likes of football, tennis and golf being in the Olympics. That upsets me a thousand times more than skateboarding or breaking. I’d rather have tiddlywinks than any sport that doesn’t see the Olympics as the pinnacle of their calendar.

Anyway, back to Paris 2024, which feels more important than ever, post-Covid, which is why I’m excited that they’re promising the most interactive Games ever. This includes 20,024 people getting to run the marathon on the same day as the elite athletes. Not at the same time, obviously.

You can’t have someone dressed a rhino scuppering Eliud Kipchoge’s dash to a third successive gold.

A lot of modern Olympic traditions remain in place. You’ll feel comforted to know that there are a couple of preliminary corruption investigations already under way. It just wouldn’t feel the same without them.

As for Team GB, I’m already purring over so many big prospects, but none more so than Keely Hodgkinson (above) in the 800metres.

The world always seems to make more sense when British athletes are doing well in the middle distances, so add the likes of Jake Wightman and Laura Muir into the medal mix and my heart rate is already racing.

Then there’s Sky Brown in the skateboarding, although she is a veteran now at the grand old age of 15!

In team events, rowing could provide a tonne of medals for Team GB but rather than fill space listing names, let’s remember what makes the Olympics a unique sporting spectacle are the stars yet made and the stories from all around the world as yet untold. Sorry 2023, but the summer of 2024 already has my full attention.

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