There’s a sea change taking place in sports. New approaches to cricket and the introduction of more informal racket sports like pickleball are helping to refresh centuries-old sports. Meanwhile sports born in the street and the club – chief among them skateboarding and breaking – are flourishing beyond their subcultural or countercultural origins as they enter a mainstream spotlight.

When both were added to the list of Olympic sports – skateboarding at Tokyo 2020 and breaking at Paris 2024 – opinions were split. Back in 2021, we heard how there was a mixture of curiosity and apprehension within some skateboarding communities when it joined the Olympics. Similarly, in their recent Future of Sport report, Dark Horses and Backslash highlight some concerns that the official veneer of the Olympics might compromise the “spirit” of breaking and push it away from its roots, which trace back to Bronx neighbourhoods in the 1970s.

Artist and breaker Frankie Perez – who has published two photography books and has worked with brands in front of and behind the lens himself – is more optimistic about Paris 2024. “Breaking arriving at the Olympics legitimises the craft within the mainstream. [It] takes it out the realm of ‘they still do that?’ or ‘can you spin on your head?’ to understanding that breaking is an actual craft that never died down and involves so much more than head spinning.” Yet what complicates things for breaking in particular is the stop-start nature of its Olympic inclusion.